Oregon Emporium (Dayton 1998 Mix)

I still have (not counting Boat Chips) ten or eleven cassettes. Most of these, sadly, are Nitpickers Guide to Star Trek: TNG audiocassettes. One is the Fletch soundtrack; another is the License to Kill soundtrack. A couple of others. And then there’s this one.

I moved to Dayton to study film at Wright State. My buddy AJ (RIP, seven years ago today) was already there, so I moved into his place on E. 5th St, the Oregon District. Got a job in the district at the coffee shop at the end of the street (which also sold fancy beers and pastries and eventually sandwiches) for rent and spending money. Eventually I stopped going to school altogether and just worked full time at the Emporium, officially "the Oregon Emporium," aka the coffee shop. 

E. 5th St. was full of bars and restaurants with lofts and apartments above most of them. We were the only coffee shop, though, so I soon got to know everyone on the block and their routines. It was a great place to live and work, early twenties, and I'm happy to have preserved some of it in musical amber with this mix tape. Anyone who listens to the same ten or eleven CDs over a thousand shifts knows how they can expand to explain or imbue every corner of your life whether you want them to or not.

I wrote a little bit about leaving Dayton the second time (1999) at the end of my DS9 post. This was the mix I made when I left the first time, mid-summer 1998. This was just before the iPhone / Instagram era, and I don't have as many pictures from Dayton and my time there as I wish I did. 

I'll link to things individually, but here's a mix of the whole thing, in order, if you prefer it that way. Without further ado, here's at least one of the soundtracks for twenty-one months of my early twenties.

SIDE ONE

1.  You and I – David Byrne

"You and I - may kill ourselves

You and I - go straight to hell

Where they have barbeque and beer

Better than they do up here

And you know all the words to the songs

Yeah - we smoke cigarettes

We dance with the dead

They're soft to the touch

We drink way too much

And darling, I think you'll like it here."

2. What’s the Use in Getting Sober – Joe Jackson

I've been fortunate to have had some good bosses over the years. One of them was Joe Miller, at the Emporium. He paid more attention to real-life stuff in my life than I did. I mean I was mostly focused on beer and my long distance girlfriend and hanging out with my friends. You know how it goes. You've seen these movies. Anyway, this was one of his CDs. I used to needle him by referring to "Got the Time" as either "that Anthrax song" or "isn't this just 'Walk Like an Egyptian' by the Bangles?"

Despite such things - and an erratic work ethic - I think Joe liked me. Before he employed me he made me read a book on the history of coffee, which I always thought was cool. I'd love to thank him for the thousand kindessness shown to me 1997-1999. You try tracking down someone named Joe Miller sometime, even in our exciting modern age. 

3. Rudies Don’t Care – Hepcat
4. No Worries - Hepcat

Here's a CD I only ever saw at the coffee shop. Some googling tells me Hepcat never really broke the big time. There was a lot of this sort of thing in the air at the time, at least in Dayton in 1997 and 1998: zydeco, swing band stuff. 

We've gotten used to the internet collecting things from all walks of life - and of lives before we were born - hell, that's what this post is, even. The past has an immediacy/ portability that it didn't used to have. I bring this up here because the "Underneath the Mango Tree" part of "Rudies Don't Care" was a throwback to my VHS childhood watching Dr. No over and over, and in 1997-1998, I loved that little connection.

Now it seems like, hey, what's the big deal? There was more segregation between past and present experiences back then. This is a bigger topic, perhaps, than how it relates to these specific remarks, but ah, the velocity of time. 

5. Mean Eyed Cat – Johnny Cash

Another of Joe's CDs. I found it so fascinating that guys my age (Joe was six or seven years older but still) were listening to Elvis and Johnny Cash. I was green enough to assume this was something unique to Dayton/ Ohio, thinking hey, they didn't do this back in Rhode Island. But they did do this back in Rhode Island, it just took me moving to Ohio to realize it.

I remember these liner notes pretty well. The coffee shop was sometimes very, very dead and I think I read the liner notes to everything, as well as the ingredients to everything in every cupboard. Anyway this was a song Johnny wrote in the 60s but never finished, so he added the last stanza for the Unchained CD. "She bought a ticket with her tips, and now we're curled up on the sofa / me and her and that mean-eyed cat."

And speaking of country:

6.  Private Conversation – Lyle Lovett. 

7. I Can’t Love You Any More - Lyle Lovett

I made many attempts with other Lyle Lovett based only on my love of these two songs, but nothing ever clicked the same way. 

Years later, my wife (back when we were just long distance love banditos) and I were driving back from New Hampshire and this tape was in the deck and she remarked on how sweet the lyrics were. (Was there more? See title.) I had literally just been thinking that the sweetness of the lyrics was not something everyone appreciates when she said that. We got married a few years later; I won't lie - those two or three seconds in the car after she said that and realizing hey, she gets it - probably had a lot to do with it. 

So hey, thanks, Lyle.  

8.  Buck Naked - David Byrne

9.  Angels –  David Byrne

“I am just an advertisement /
for a version of myself” 

Not much to say here. Two great tunes. "I'm ready now / but where are you?"

10.  Make a Change - Buckwheat Zydeco

More zydeco. The summer of 1997 in the District was big with this kind of stuff, like I said up there. It's in the background of all my memories, just as DS9 was the spring and summer after. A weird match but such things happen, in life, mix tapes, and up there in the scrambled McBrains. 

11.  Tommy's Song - Hepcat

12.  Country Boy – Johnny Cash. 

Listening to this again reminded me of something I'd almost forgotten: this CD eventually got taken out of rotation because someone in the District complained about the "Jesus, Jesus" refrain of one of the songs.

My country appreciation more or less stopped with Johnny Cash, Patsy Cline, and Elvis, not counting some other stuff my friend Mike had back in the day. I later worked at a bar that had a lot of country in the jukebox - new country, old country, classic country, alt-country, you name it. Heard most of the big ones and more than a few of the older ones. More power to them all, but most of it's just not for me. 

Hip hop and country, pretty much: two genres that never hooked me then or now outside of a few outliers. Who knows what the future holds?

SIDE TWO

1.  Love Is Strange – Everything But the Girl 

I don't remember much about this one except it probably made me miss my girlfriend or something ridiculous. This is that part of the movie, I guess. (The hero descends to the underworld...) 

2.  Gimme Me Some Truth – Sam Philips 

Here's an album and artist I unfairly forget about in between spins of this mix tape. (I think I've rectified this, though, by discovering several subsequent albums on Amazon Music, the kind I already have, so I bookmarked a few. Looking forward to it.)

T Bone Burnett, her ex, produced this one. He and Butch Vig and a few others really authored the 90s sound for me in my head. I keep forgetting I have Stephen King's and John Mellencamp's Ghost Brothers of Darkland County waiting to be listened to, and that's produced by T Bone Burnett. I need to better organize my queues. That's, ironically, in the queue - better time management - for the post-blog life. 

3.  Sad Song  – David Byrne 
4.  Rowboat – Johnny Cash
5.  Sea of Heartbreak - Johnny Cash
6.  Rusty Cage - Johnny Cash

These lyrics are so funny, but it cracks me up how every song is about being sad. I have these routines I do with my wife, now, about songs from the 80s or 90s, and one of them is just how Chris Cornell was always talking about hanging himself. This was, you know, before. Ouch. Retired that one from "the set." 

When I hear these songs now I a) love them b) think of how my life in most of the nineties was defined by dehydration, overtiredness, and various things I don't feel like mentioning to the court. Most of my opinions, feelings, and moods I see through a lava lamp of such. I wonder how the 90s would have I seemed had I ate oatmeal and drank enough water every day? 

"Sea of Heartbreak" is so great. That's Tom Petty on there - I mentioned the liner notes. At one time I had all these guest parts memorized. He and Johnny Cash were both alive back then, too, with good albums and big hits still to come. Cornell, Cash, and Tom Petty - looking at the future from the past from beyond the grave. 

"The lights in the harbor / don't shine for me..."

7.  So Long Baby Goodbye– the Blasters

Joe had a bunch of CDs there that I'd describe as dorm room music from the mid-80s. I don't know if this fits that bill, or if my memory is even accurate, but I can picture this one playing over a crane shot of a mid-80s campus party, for sure. 

This and the Blasters' "Dark Night" were in a few things. Two great tunes for sure. 

8.   Baby I Can’t Please You – Sam Philips. 

9.   Black Sky - Sam Phillips

10.   Wheel of the Broken Voice - Sam Phillips 

I never saw this video at the time. The only over-the-air TV I watched at that time was Sunday nights for the line-up. ("The Simpons" through "The X-Files" with the middle spot being whatever Fox was hawking). The rest was all laser disc, or VHS. 

At the tail end of my time in Dayton we were getting really crappy TV reception in one room in one of those furniture-TVs AJ inherited from when his Dad moved to San Francisco. We watched some 90210 over that, and I definitely (memorably) watched He Touched Me on that thing, as it put the bow on my going to Dayton to become an Elvis fan. There's a tie-in with the name homonym of the artist, here - I digress. There’s no Elvis on this mix and there probably should be. Luscious Jackson, too, and plenty more. 

“Wheel of the Broken Voice” – those lyrics, oh the 90s-ness! But in the best way. Not a Rusted Root way. Both could be used to the same effect in Dawson’s Creek, though, and few would know the difference. Don’t shoot the messenger. Incidentally, Sam Phillips went on to be the soundtrack of quite a few Gilmore Girls episodes. 

11.  Throwing Stones - Bob Weir

This (the linked-to) is not the same version on my tape. It doesn't sound all that different, except Wasserman is turned up in the mix on that version and not on mine. This was from a CD bootleg of some kind, back when such things weren't exactly uncommon but not something I can look up. Or, I could, if I had more info to track it down, but all I have is "that solo version of "Throwing Stones" on that one bootleg, recorded sometime between 1987 and 1998.

It's pretty great, though. 

12. I’ve Been Everywhere – Johnny Cash. 

The tape ends with this one, which became a commercial and lost a bit of its luster as a result, but for a few years there it was cool insider baseball. I mean, in my circles. Not for cosmopolitan fancy folks, or country folks. 

Oh for when such things mattered even while pretending they didn’t.

But this mix extends a bit beyond the tape, to a long shot of me closing up the shop across the street, finishing up, with a couple of ghosts, living and dead, smiling back at me, to “Last Dance.” Call it a special feature or a post-credits sequence. 

Fini

~

"I'm the ice cubes in your glass
A busted Cadillac
A garden of delight
A joker in your deck

Well it ain't in what I feel
No, it ain't in what I say
In the pleasure of a kiss
It never fades away."

- David Byrne

That Ten Albums Thing

You've probably seen this thing in your internet travels:

"10 all-time favorite albums that really made an impact and are still on your rotation list, even if only now and then. Post the cover, no need to explain, and nominate a person to do the same."

This is the sort of thing I rarely participate in when it's tag-a-friend activity, but I like to chew over on my own time. As I did so, I learned two things: (1) there are albums that have endured with me over the years - and most of them are on the list below, but (2) what was more interesting to me are the albums that - in hindsight - were the key ones in my musical/ personal development. Or the ones that helped get me through/over tough times. Problem with those last kind of albums is how often do you revisit them once you're over whatever tough time or period of growth they helped you with? It can vary and bears discussion. This made the second part of the instructions ("no need to explain") irritating; the only thing that's interesting to me about doing it is explaining it.

Oh, and (3) ten was way too few. So:

But after assembling twenty-five albums and sorting them all out, I decided that was too many. So (with apologies to Ace Frehley, Hapa, Richard Ashcroft, the Who, Sergei Prokofiev, Miles Davis, and more) without any further ado:

Honorable Mention 

aka Okay A Little More Ado:

Jimmy Buffet, Don't Stop the Carnival, 1998

I'm not much of a Jimmy Buffett fan. Outside of this album, I only ever had a couple of others, and none of them stayed with me. This one, though, is great - a commercial failure and virtually forgotten today, but a worthy attempt at a musical based on Herman Wouk's novel of the same name. (The book's pretty good, too.) More than worthy - I'd say it's inspired. Not just a collection of very agreeable tunes, but the story is rendered about as well as it would have been by Broadway professionals. Buffett's whole approach / persona was a good fit for it; too bad it didn't catch fire. (Except with me.)

First heard: Don't quite remember. I listened to it an awful lot driving back and forth to Poughkeepsie in 1998. I do remember getting the CD bounced from the stereo at the Oregon Emporium in Dayton the following year in favor of some (vastly inferior) G Love and Special Sauce. Nobody had time for my Jimmy Buffett bullshit. Same story today!

Favorite tunes: "Public Relations," "Island Fever."

15.

Beatles Anthology, 1995 - 1996

Technically, I don't really listen to the Beatles Anthology all that much anymore, something not true of the next fourteen selections. But for this to come out at arguably the peak of my Beatles hysteria in the early-to-mid 90s (thank you, Kevin Silvia) was incredibly exciting. Actually, the Beatlemania lasted with me from around 1992 through around 2000. But it never really went away - the Beatles still rule. I just ran out of their stuff to listen to. (Technically, there are always new Paul and Ringo albums, but I stopped with Working Classical and I Want to Be Santa Claus, respectively.) 

Favorite tracks: Too many to mention. The alternates for "And Your Bird Can Sing", "Ob-La-Di", and "Norwegian Wood" are pretty awesome. The deep tracks I'd been reading about for years (well, all two of them, but I read everything I could get my hands on about the Beatles in those years) were "Leave My Kitten Alone" and "What's the New Mary Jane". YouTube's kind of tough when it comes to the Fab Four, but here's the "Moonlight Bay" that's on part 1. I love that whole bit from start to finish. 

Shame on them leaving off "Some Other Guy," though. Had to get The BBC Sessions for that one, though not that one, aforelinked.

14.

Operation Ivy, Energy, 1989

Around this time (89) I started getting a ride to school in the morning with my buddy Ryan, and he's the one of the handful of people responsible for getting me out of my all-metal bubble. One of his big tapes was this Op Ivy one, which kicks so much ass, still, that it's difficult to believe it all came out of one band, let alone one album. When I want to remember what the late 80s felt like for me and my buddies in that some-of-us-had-our-license/some-of-us-didn't/we-all-liked-skateboards-and-southern-comfort-and-Metroid era, here it all is.

Favorite tracks: "Sound System," "Gonna Find You," "Smiling," "Vulnerability," "Bankshot," "Bombshell." They're all great.   

Could've also chosen: Mighty Mighty Bosstones - Devil's Night Out, Black Flag - The First Four Years, The Circle Jerks - Wonderful. Or the Ramones greatest hits tape Ryan had. Same impact, same love/ nostalgia for them now. But, of them, the only one I still listen to semi-regularly is Energy.

13.

The Doors soundtrack, 1991

I decided to use this as my Doors stand-in because when I did that one post on the Doors, I realized this does quite a good job of capturing the essential sides of the Doors. Less a soundtrack, more a primer. Of the many soundtracks that came into my life at key junctures (moving from one place to another, graduating from one thing to another, break-ups, new loves, memorable vacations, etc.) this one still casts a pretty long shadow. It was the siren call from the paths I'd been walking into the more beatnik-y realms. 

First Heard It / Favorite Tracks / Reverie: (from that post) "If you ever rode in my car 1990-1992, you'd have found one cassette that never left rotation: The Doors soundtrack, which had among other things, "O Fortuna!" Ten years later, it was in everything from Doritos commercials to movie trailers (especially movie trailers), but back then, I was the only guy in town who had it, and cranking it as I pulled into any parking lot announced me as a singular and fascinating fellow. At least in the adolescent fever of my imagining."

12.

1986

I'm not here to tell you this is the best metal album of the 80s, but it's my vote for the most underrated, maybe not just the 80s but of all time. I say this not really knowing what may or may not be an underrated metal album post 1992 or so, but FFS this one rules. I knew it when I first heard it, I knew it eight years later when I knew "hipper" music, I knew it in 1997 and in 2000 when I went through two of my periodic metal renaissances, and I've known it every year since, right down to a couple of months ago where listening to it put me in a good (and ridiculous) mood for days. Magical alchemy here - still works. 

Favorite tracks: Every last one. But possible favorites: "Call Out the Warning," "Cry Out the Fools," or "Shout It Out." ("Let me touch your soul I'll take you awaaaaaay....!") Holy frakking hell, friends - if that doesn't make you feel like a shirtless and deranged demigod lurking over a pit of lava at the end of all epochs, we're just reading from different playbooks. 

11.

First performed 1853. Maria Callas recording 1958.

I've really been into opera lately, so the importance of this one in my life has only recently revealed itself to me. Back in the late 90s, on the advice of my then-girlfriend's housemate I ended up buying this and making a sincere effort to learn the story. It was easy to listen to - there's a reason La Traviata has been continually performed around the world for over 160 years - but I wasn't ready. I liked it, but I just didn't understand opera. It laid, however, a foundation for the opera house I only began to build in 2017 and am still building now. 

One of these days I'll blog something up about all the opera I've been taking to the brain over the past six months. It's been wonderful. It's like I trained my entire life for it without even realizing. Of that training, the most essential was performed in the 1999-2001 era, and it was listening to this CD and getting an idea of what the genre was and getting the melodies in my head.

Favorite tunes: Here's the Violetta-Germont duet (and more) from the same run of performances captured on the EMI release - not sure if this is the exact same as the one on the CD but worth it just the same.

10.

1995

In 2000 and 2001, I was putting myself back together or perhaps fully-together for the first time in my burgeoning adult life after the relationship I had throughout the 90s ended. In retrospect, it was amazing it lasted as long as it did. More on this in a few entries. Music, as it often does, played a role in putting Humpty Dumpty back together again. Not just this album, but this one got an awful lot of airplay while driving around Rhode Island during this time. 

Since I first started hearing such things - let's say 1994 or 1995 - I was a fan of the "techno remix" genre. It kind of all reached a head in the late 90s and finally started petering out in the early years of the 21st century, but this techno remix of Blondie tunes scored twice with me: once as just a fun collection of remixed tunes ("Atomic," "Union City Blue," "Sunday Girl," * "Heart of Glass," "Dreaming" - are you kidding me? Blondie's tunes were made for this treatment) and twice as an evocation of all the Blondie I heard growing up, particularly when my Mom would enlist my help in cleaning the house on weekends and she'd play their Greatest Hits cassette.

* It's criminal there is no link to this, and even worse that there is a YouTube version listed as this remix but which is actually the remix from the same album as "Atomic." 

It's this latter memory that lingers with me now: this - as was discovering reruns of TNG on Saturday afternoons in the same period - was one of the first things to trigger nostalgia-time-travel in me as an adult, mainly because I was approaching thirty and had finally accumulated enough years to actually feel nostalgia for bygone ages and the lingering musical/TV ghosts they left in my psyche. 

9.

1990

On a short list of most influential/ life-changing folks in my life is Jello Biafra, former frontman (and main maestro) for the Dead Kennedys. A huge influence on my politics in the late 80s/ early 90s. Throughout the 90s, actually. And although we've drifted in political alignment somewhat over the years his musical legacy in my life - as well as his music's widening of my little suburban cable-TV world - is still celebrated. No moreso than this masterpiece he did with Al Jourgensen from Ministry infamy, which I still listen to fairly regularly. Just fantastic. How tracks like "Mate Spawn and Die" and "Drug Raid at 4 am" never became staples of any kind amazes me. "Drug Raid" especially is the best opening to a Cops spin-off that never happened.

"You can't throw me to the lions - I'm Charlton Heston! 

You can't throw me to the lions - I'M CHARLTON HESTON!"

Could've been: Jello and DOA - Last Scream of the Missing Neighbors. Similar impact, similar awesomeness, similar longevity in my life (right down to last week when I was singing "Full Metal Jackoff"'s ending refrain in response to the news that Ollie North was now the NRA President.) But Last Temptation of Reid gets the nod by a hair.

8.

1995

Ahh, Different Class. Absolute classic. And it doesn't even even have my favorite Pulp song on it ("The Trees"). During the 90s I learned hard truths about America's homegrown caste system via the relationship I was in for almost that whole decade. "Common People" isn't quite an on-the-nose-from-afar description of said relationship/ learning curve, but it's one of those songs that is specific/universal enough to touch a lot of people. It gave me some perspective I needed at the time and makes even more sense in the rearview. That Shatner recorded his own version the year I moved to Chicago seemed at the time like vindication, perhaps even destiny. But beyond McBiography, it's just a kick-ass anthem and an all-time classic. 

The other classic from this one (although every track in the album is great) is "Disco 2000," which was kinda cool to be into when the year 2000 still loomed in the future as some Galactic Barrier of some kind. What a tune, though, regardless.

Could've been: Britpop hit me pretty hard in the mid-to-late-90s. As far as impactful albums go, I could've listed Oasis' "Wonderwall" import UK single (with those killer B-sides), the Stone Roses first album (which was new to me at the time), or Creation Records seminal (and harder to find these days - wish I hadn't have traded it in to Gem City Records for beer money back in the day!) collection International Guardians of Rock and Roll. 

I considered putting in some kind of New Order/ 24 Hour Party People entry, as Madchester-music really took over my life for a year or two, but in retrospect, it was more an outgrowth of this earlier Britpop experience. So in terms of impact, it'd be Different Class over those, even if I arguably loved those more intensely. 

7.

1996

First heard it: When it was in constant rotation in the early days of the coffee shop (aka Java-storm at the Oregon Emporium, Dayton, OH) 1997. I couldn't believe my age were listening to country. There was a country station in RI when I was growing up, and my Dad and the other guys at the VFW were the only ones who listened to it. This changed over the course of the 90s - many theories abound and many more learned than myself have mapped the migratory patterns of listeners and demographics. All I know is: until I finally stopped resisting this album - and it was easy to stop, with its improbable cover versions of Soundgarden, Beck, and Tom Petty - the last country song I liked was "Queen of Hearts" by Juice Newton. (And I'm old enough where having to add "by Juice Newton" pisses me off; who the hell else sings "Queen of Hearts?" Juice Newton owns that.) 

This opened up the whole genre to me, although truthfully is was a brief affair. I discovered I only really enjoyed old country, and in small doses. But (a) the exception is Johnny Cash, whose entire career I love, and (b) it led me to Elvis. So, this one album is responsible for a good 20% of what I listen to, still, every year. 

Favorites tracks: "I've Been Everywhere," which everyone knows thanks to the car commercial or whatever it was, but for awhile was kind of off the beaten track, "Mean Eyed Cat," and "Sea of Heartbreak." 

6.

1984

I often wonder if I'd be as into symphonic music and classical composers had I not spent those 5 childhood years in Germany. Who can tell, but field trips to Salzburg and Vienna certainly left a deep impression. I'd say equal to them was the timely release of Amadeus when I was 10 years old. I loved this movie - still do, but for some reason it captured my imagination completely when I was in 6th grade. (It came out in '84, but I didn't obsess over it until the fall of the following year.) 

Was this the 2nd soundtrack I ever bought? (The 1st was Back to the Future, I know that.) It was not the first classical music I ever bought; that was a Deutsche Grammophone cassette of Beethoven's 5th and 6th symphonies, which still sounded flawless for at least 20 years after. (Easily the best constructed cassette I ever owned). But it was Amadeus that opened up pretty much all symphonic music for me, and it's an affection that has grown deeper within each year since. 

Favorite tracks: Look, friends, you can't get go wrong with Mozart. His music is the epitome of the enlightenment ideal, and it still looks and sounds pristine and heavenly and like nothing else ever created centuries later. I won't get into whether the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields (conducted by Sir Neville Marriner) is the best representation of the material, only that since this is what I first learned Mozart from, it is under Sir Neville's baton and as interpreted by that Academy that the material sounds right to me. There is considerable disagreement about who "gets" Mozart the best, conducting-wise, so I mention it only to note my own bias. 

Anyway, they're all favorites. If you like metal, then the "1st Movement of Symphony #25" is probably your jam. Also very metal: "Act 2, Scene 24" from Don Giovanni. But this is an excellent selection of Mozart, here, spread out over 2 discs. Whenever I see anyone with a "Best of" Cd, I wonder why they didn't just get this one.

Or, you know, everything. It's Mozart! FFS.

5.

1991

If I had to pick a single Sinatra record to represent the man's music, I'd pick his first one for Reprise Records, Ring-a-Ding-Ding (1961). To paraphrase Michael Cera's character from the criminally underrated Youth in Revolt, the world would be a better place if radio stations added this to its daily rotation. 

But it was this CD that had the actual impact (and led me to Ring-a-Ding-Ding, years later.) I don't listen to this CD very much anymore. It was the compilation disc of a Sinatra Reprise box from around the same time. Both were completely off my radar until I got to college and my buddy Andy down the hall introduced my to Sinatra. As with Amadeus and so many more of these selections, it opened up an entire genre to me (old time crooney and big band stuff) that seems to become more and more of a favorite with each passing year. 

Andy, by the way, used to drive this convertible Saturn that was a pretty sweet ride. He was one of those guys who played his car music at ear-splitting, punishing volume. I went to visit him in New Jersey once and he took me into New York City for the first time. As we crossed over the George Washington Bridge and descended into the skyscrapers, he cued up "Theme from New York, New York." Top ten moments of my youth, right there. 

Years Later: I've never listened to every Frank Sinatra record, but I once made an attempt. It gets a little squirrelly as you get into the late 60s and 70s (altho this disco remix of "All or Nothing at All" is pretty great) but I'm still a huge fan. I listen to his entire Capital Records era in order at least once every few years, and I've got my own mixes of his Reprise and Columbia years in even more frequent rotation than that. 

4.

1988

The message and ideology of Mindcrime has only grown more prescient in the 30 years since its release. But beyond its dystopian fatalism and the (considerable) artfulness of the story, it's just such a killer collection of music. Heavy metal opera at its finest. Side 1 is pound for pound (performance, Viking axe assault, intensity of message, theatricality, etc.) probably the greatest side of heavy metal ever created. (Wikipedia lists side 2 beginning with "Suite Sister Mary," but that's crazy: my copy and everyone else's I knew had side 2 starting with "The Needle Lies.") 

"I used to trust the media

To tell me the truth, tell us the truth

But now I've seen the payoffs

Everywhere I look

Who do you trust when everyone's a crook?"

Favorite tracks: "Speak," "The Mission," and "Spreading the Disease."

3.

1973

From the moment a young me (7 or 8 ish) heard the opening crunch to the title track, it was over: metal for life. Well, life-ish: for me, metal more or less ends in the early 90s. But the metal-lest of them all is Sabbath Bloody Sabbath. 

My brother had this on one side of a cassette, and Saxon's Crusader was on the other. Crusader also could be listed (along with Judas Priest's Sin After Sin) in this spot, for all the same reasons. But Sabbath has been one of those all-purpose albums for me that we all have that gets picked when you can't really figure out what else you want to hear; it fits pretty much any mood or situation I need it for. (Well, most.) It's great for road trips as well as quiet nights at home. It defines metal for me so precisely that I feel silly saying anything more; just crank it.

Favorite tracks: "Sabbra Cadabra" all the way; Ozzy's voice coming in when and how it does around the fifty-two second mark is a contender for coolest moment of the 20th century. 

2.

1978

Around the same time as I was listening to my brother's walkman copies of the above, I was listening to one he made for me of his double vinyl of this progressive rock masterpiece. This was my entrypoint into HG Wells and all the countless worlds beyond and for that alone it would be high up on this list, but not this high. Here it is at the penultimate spot for two reasons: 

(1) I spent a lot of time in the Germany years looking out the window of buses or cars at a landscape so utterly unlike the Pawtucket, Rhode Island one I'd known in the late 70s. I listened to this musical so much during those years that burned over my montage of Euro-memories is this riff, this sound, and this sound. I remain profoundly grateful for (and rather bewildered by) this. 

And (2) it became, through no planning for this on my part, my Thanksgiving album. When I cook or clean up or any part of it. Usually fits the time spent having to do any of that quite well, and I've come to look forward to it year to year.

The art that came with it was the equal of the production.

And finally:

1.

2004

It's impossible for me to describe the impact of this album on my life during the spring and summer of 2005. I will, of course, try.

The year before had seen me at a very low point. I'd arrived in Chicago the way shipwrecks wash up on the reef and was crashing on a couch, then finally got a job and could afford an air mattress and room of my own, and so forth up the long ladder back to normalcy. I turned 30 during this time and was working at the since-closed Virgin Megastore at Ohio and Michigan. It was there I first heard SMiLE, at a promotional release event of some kind, although mainly I just remember hearing something weird over the speakers and trying to figure out what it was. When it really clicked with me was months later on a hungover train ride home one Sunday morning - on a discman, no less - when a lack of sleep, hydration, rest, and somewhat random choice of musical accompaniment made it the backdrop of a deep epiphany: I was only getting more and more depressed and something had to change. It was a Larry Underwood Pays the Bills kind of moment.

Which he/ I did - but that's a story for another time. Brian Wilson's SMiLE * proved uniquely healing for me; it seems almost designed to piece back together a shattered ego in a more productive and sensitive direction. Whether or not this is all just my projection on it, who knows, but the music itself is undeniable. It's abstract, multi-layered, a masterclass of sequencing, innocent yet tortured, a sonata gone mad, and just a fun, fun record. 

And it fucking ends with "Good Vibrations!" My friends, if you're going to go crazy and then come back to reality - and here I refer to the work's author and not myself; nothing I've done equals the drama of Mr. Wilson's life - this is the wormhole you want to do it with.

* And it really could be called Darian Sahanaja's and Brian Wilson's SMiLE, so instrumental is Darian's contribution to the project.

A beautiful record that blows away any description of it I could give. The way it weaves in and out of sadness from "Our Prayer" on its hard-earned way to "Good Vibrations" can only be experienced. Favorite tracks: "Good Vibrations," obviously, but also "Wonderful," "Surf's Up," "Vege-tables," and "Mrs. O'Leary's Cow."

Quick p.s. Original post had a lot more about acid and my enduring love of the original Beach Boys famously unfinished Smiley Smile Sessions, particularly "Whistle In" and "Can't Wait Too Long." (Especially that last one.) But I wanted to keep the focus on Brian Wilson's specific 2004 version, bless it to fractals.

~