Nine albums that made my life.
Tragic Kingdom, No Doubt
Tragic Kingdom is the first album I can remember singing along to at the top of my lungs and really getting into it. I didn’t listen to music until the early 90’s and Aerosmith was the first band that totally did it for me. One of the earliest songs I can remember loving is “Cryin”. It wasn’t until Aerosmith that I started paying attention to music and they deserve a serious shoutout for that. Thanks Aerosmith.
That being said, singing along to Aerosmith and other songs didn’t really do that much for me. I did sing along and it was fine, but it wasn’t really remarkable. Singing along to Tragic Kingdom felt remarkable and I did it often.
Sinatra 80th - All The Best, Frank Sinatra
At some point in high school I decided I needed a copy of this Sinatra song I’d heard called “Fly Me To The Moon.” I found a double disc compilation called All The Best with the song “Come Fly With Me” on it, assumed that was probably the song I was looking for, and purchased my first ever Sinatra album.
It turns out those are two entirely different songs.
Listening to that compilation started a multi-year, multi-album Sinatra obsession, including a college radio show entitled The Sinatra Show which had kick ass posters. Over the last decade, my obsession has tapered slightly and shifted from music to movies, most recently Guys and Dolls. Also, I had to create a “Sinatra” genre in my music database because I had too much Frankie to put into any other category without the Sinatra albums completely taking over.
La Bohème, Giacomo Puccini
I saw the middle part of La Bohème accidentally on PBS one night. I think it was raining - maybe it wasn’t. But I came in on the broadcast after it had already begun and the feed went out toward the end. Based on what little I saw, I immediately went out and found a copy of it on CD and began listening to it. A lot.
Years later, after I’d gone to college, graduated from college, and was living in the Twin Cities, La Bohème came to town. I ended up seeing it three times during the month long run. I mentioned that it was playing to my homeboy Oz and he immediately bought a plane ticket to Minneapolis just so he could be a part of the experience of me seeing La Bohème.
I think La Bohème was a door opener, not only musically but for life in general. Something in the music showed me there was an amazing alternate way of experiencing life that I hadn’t been aware of prior.
Janet., Janet Jackson
My most creative, productive summer of writing in high school happened with Janet. playing on repeat in the background. My writing has certainly gotten better in the last 10 years, but writing has never felt as good as it did that summer. The memory of my high school room, warm country breezes blowing through my window, dim lights, almost more stars than sky in the sky, and Janet. serenading me will hopefully be burned into my memory forever. I rarely miss Tennessee but I definitely miss those warm, quiet nights. Whenever I write, a part of me is chasing after the feeling of that summer.
A Love Supreme, John Coltrane
So if you know me, you may know about my recurring dream of the magical, secret waterfall garden place. It’s very lush and green, full of light and willow trees, there are small streams all over, feeding into a large pond with a little waterfall.
The dreams themselves weren’t identical - just the place. No narrative. Nothing ever “happened”. There were no other people. I just walk around in this beautiful place.
I’ve only found a couple of places that have come close to that place from my dreams. The first is the crumbling property where Ms. Dinsmoor lives in the 1998 version of Great Expectations. The second is this park I found last summer near my house.
This story is relevant because starting around the same time, give or take some years, I got this beautiful fragment of a melody stuck in my head. I’d hum it, I’d whistle it, I’d dream it. It wasn’t a fully realized melody, just a little breezy idea of a melody that was permanently in my head. While the place with the green, the willows, and the pond was also something that just existed in my head, I could take some solace in having it be a complete, realized thing in my mind. Given enough resources, I could recreate it. These few notes in my head - there was something about them that made me feel like I could fly, once, but had forgotten how. It was torture.
While exploring jazz a few years ago, I turned to some “Best Ever Jazz” lists and most of them ranked John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme highly. After buying it, I discovered that it was the opening sax blast from the alternate take of Part II that had been stuck in my head for over a decade. For the record, when I heard it, it felt like flying. Finding A Love Supreme, as much as anything else, has legitimized the presence of hope in my life.
Tidal, Fiona Apple
I heard Tidal, fell in love with it, and I’ve been looking for music like it ever since. Prior to that, music was a surface level endeavor for me. Something about Tidal made me wanna listen to it and actually pay attention. Listen intentionally. I found the more I invested in listening, the more the album gave back to me. That lesson prepped me for many of the artists that make up my world: Rufus Wainwright, Stevie Wonder, Charles Mingus, Miles Davis, Neko Case, et al. This is the album that showed me music doesn’t have to be something that’s disposable - it can be worth savoring.
Home, Dixie Chicks
Home is beautiful, contains one of my favorite songs in the world, “Godspeed (Sweet Dreams)”, and it’s a travesty that it lost album of the year in 2003 to Norah Jones’ now completely irrelevant debut album.
After graduating from college, I spent a lonely year in Chicago. I think I’d heard the first year out could be tough, but I was still very unprepared. Part of me is appreciative, in hindsight, that I spent it in isolation in Chicago. It was part one in an extended lesson on what’s precious about life and what can slide.
I worked downtown at a wine bar during that time - it was near the building depicted on the cover of Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. I had to ride the bus over 90 blocks to get there from where I was staying on the south side. I spent many of those bus rides listening to Home and gazing out the window, looking at nothing in particular and feeling nothing in particular beyond a generic blend of sad and confused. Home didn’t make life seem not shitty, but it did make the shitty feel better.
Unplugged, Alanis Morissette
Jagged Little Pill was one of those albums that rocked everyone’s world when it came out. I liked it. And then I fell out of like with it.
On Jagged and her other studio albums, Alanis seems to hide behind her production. Alanis Morissette has a great voice and is a strong performer. This much is evident on Unplugged. On her studio albums, the songs seem to drive her voice instead of her voice driving the songs. For artists who can’t sing and have no emotional presence in their songs, this is fine. If you’re Alanis Morissette, this is just dumb.
The contrasts between her Unplugged performance and Jagged Little Pill really brought into focus what it sounds like for a great artist to give a great performance. It provided me with the necessary perspective to better appreciate artists such as Alison Krauss and Union Station, Neko Case, Rufus Wainwright, Dixie Chicks, et al.
Now, I always look to acoustic performances as one place to really find the soul of an artist and song.
Return To The 36 Chambers, Ol’ Dirty Bastard
God bless Ol’ Dirty Bastard.
I’m still learning not to fear making beauty out of chaos, to let my freak flag fly high, and that it’s okay to wander a few steps off the ranch every now and again. Return to the 36 Chambers helped start that process.
