Ten Albums

The great Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison

For awhile now I've been contemplating writing a blog on music. I've started a few but they sit there as drafts since the topic, for me,  is a bit overwhelming and I have so very much to say.   

People who know me well know I am a music addict. In my lifetime, nothing has given me more comfort and solace in my most difficult moments.  It is also something I've studied for a lifetime - it started as a youth in the 1960's when we we were inundated with such marvelous music and became cemented in my freshman year of college when I took a course entitled, "Popular Culture - Rock Music".  The final exam had two hundred questions and I think it was the only final I ever received a 100% score on! 

Since that time in my life all my interests, sans music, have waxed and waned. However, the one sure and solid and reliable source of diversion and comfort has been my tunes - LPs, 45's, 8 track tapes, cassettes, cds and now downloads - it's never mattered. I've always surrounded myself with music.

I am planning a trip next Autumn to Mississippi and Tennessee to visit the Blues Trail, Memphis, and Nashville and attend the annual Americana-fest.  I can't remember being more excited about a trip. I'll be right there in the heart of it all.

Suffice it to say - I could go on for thousands of words about music but I'm going to limit the scope of this particular post by using the criteria suggested by Alex.  Here goes:

“In no particular order – which 10 albums really made an impact and are still on your rotation, even if only now and then." It also says I should "post the cover and nominate another person to do the same" - uh, no to that part about nominating others.  I'll tell you what mine are and if you're motivated to do the same exercise - then get on it! 

An important proviso - these are not, necessarily, the albums that I think are the "best".  For example, "Sergeant Pepper's" is certainly superior to "Magical Mystery Tour" - these are, instead, the albums that influenced me - my life and musical tastes, more than any others... Note also this is not a list of my favorite bands - otherwise, for example,  the Rolling Stones would be in my top 5...

Also...while the instructions indicate there is "no particular order", these are fairly chronological. 

​Enough. Here goes...

Number one is an album that my parents purchased that I probably listened to more than any other as a child, "Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison". It was released in 1968, I was eleven years old, and it's impact on me - musically, politically, sociologically was profound and remains so to this day. Johnny's identification with the downtrodden and lost and hopeless modeled for me exactly how a man should be. As I got older and was, at times, downtrodden, lost and hopeless myself, this album always brought and still brings comfort. Who other than Johnny could have sung with such anger, regret and sadness, "I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die"?

When he sang, "I bet there's rich folks eating in their fancy dining car, they're probably drinking coffee and smoking big cigars" I hated those rich and free people even though he knew "I had it coming, I know can't be free, but those people keep on movin' and that's what tortures me". And...what tortured me was the implication that they didn't know or care about the other sad and troubled riders, like Johnny's sad narrator, on their own train. Those people still don't.

The entire album merited nearly daily listening in my youth and it's still in my regular rotation after all these years.

It's just bad ass...

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ROLL UP! ROLL UP! Number two was the very first album I bought with my own money.  I was 10 years old and I saved my allowance each week. The guy at the record store wanted me, for some reason, to buy the new Rolling Stones album  "Their Satanic Majesties Request"  but I would have none if it.  I had to have, just had to have, "Magical Mystery Tour".  I wore out the grooves on it. 

Of course , it's magnificent and I enjoyed that my mom hated, "I Am the Walrus" and it's lyric, "yellow matter custard dripping from a dead dog's eye", which was part of John's freaky imagery and while I didn't necessarily enjoy the picture of that image I liked that my mom thought it was so awful.  Damn, I was a rebel. 

My favorite song from this album was and remains, "Strawberry Fields".  There have been songs, perhaps a dozen or so in my entire lifetime, that on first hearing take me away to a distant place - Strawberry Fields is one for me.  

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Let me take you down
'Cause I'm going to Strawberry Fields
Nothing is real
And nothing to get hung about
Strawberry Fields forever
​
Living is easy with eyes closed
Misunderstanding all you see
It's getting hard to be someone
But it all works out
It doesn't matter much to me

Still works, doesn't it? 

​

Number 3 is another I purchased, as an 8 track tape, on my own as an 8th grader at Ralph's Department Store in Blue Jay, CA.  I played Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits, Vol. II, over and over and over and drove my father to exclaim one day, "Can't you find ANYTHING other than that to play"?!" I'm an American Roots music man these days and so was this one influential? Well...yeah...obviously and profoundly. This was a delicious double album. Talk about resonating in my heart, soul and ears. 

Of course, over the years, I have met people who claim that they, "don't like Bob Dylan's voice".  That's cool, but my hunch is that they have favorite artists that don't have beautiful voices and whose success as a singer is perhaps because Bob led the way on lyrics and vocal expression...but to each his own. In my younger days I tried to teach the world about Dylan and and I ended up doing the learning. I learned that some people just aren't gonna "get it" and that's ok.   

I have many thoughts about old Bob which probably will merit a single blog post in the future - my final exam in the Rock History class I was boasting about earlier?  Of the 200 questions - 190 were about Bob.  It's no wonder I aced it and got along famously with the professor. At age 61 I realize there will not be another artist who will mean as much to me in my lifetime as Dylan.  His winning of the Nobel Prize finally shut down some of the ignorance about his work but, if you don't like Bob, don't you realize what you're missing?

​Ah here I go again...maybe, after all,  I still haven't learned the lesson...
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Number 4 "Harvest". ​Another artist, my entire life, who I've always managed to find at just the right moment is the great Neil Young.  This album, from my high school days, if I had to guess, is probably the one I've played more than any other when I've been deeply sad (Simon and Garfunkel are good, too!).  At my high school, when the weather was nice, the Drama Dept. would pipe music outside and I can remember warm, spring days listening to "Heart of Gold" and feeling that teenage youthful joy that we only experience when we're young.  This is another album in which I could discuss each track and how much it has meant to me over the years.  One song, "Out on the Weekend" might just be number one on the soundtrack of my life.  Obviously, it's "still in my rotation".  Neil has always seemed to understand the profound sadness and strangeness of life. ​

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See the lonely boy,
out on the weekend
Trying to make it pay.
Can't relate to joy,
he tries to speak and
Can't begin to say.

​

Number 5 - The first concert I attended, in the Fall of 1974, was Elton John at the Fabulous Forum in Inglewood, CA.  Elton had some songs that were big hits on the radio and while I loved, "Yellow Brick Road" (still do) it was "Madman Across the Water" that captured my passion.  I didn't realize it at the time but the great Elton John lyricist, Bernie Taupin, was living just a few miles away in a nearby neighboring mountain town, Blue Jay, CA.  "Tiny Dancer" has always been a favorite and I still use it as one of the quintessential road trip songs. The image of the "seamstress for the band" while they travel from town to town captures some essential travel vibe that still resonates.

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Hold me closer tiny dancer
Count the headlights on the highway
Lay me down in sheets of linen
You had a busy day today

There are several excellent songs on this album although they may not be as well known as Elton's "hits".  I hope you can imagine my horror and sadness when this artist started making songs Like "Philadelphia Freedom" and went so far away from his original brilliance.  Oh Elton, where did you go? 

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Number 6 - "The Band". Most of these "influential" albums are obviously from my youth.  This band and this album have been my "go to's" all my adult life.  In my view, the Americana genre was really started and pioneered by The Band (ironically 4 of the 5 members were from Canada).  Robbie Robertson and Levon Helm are two of my musical heroes.  I was lucky enough to see The Band in 1975 at the Greek Theater for their last tour and just a few short months before the famous "Last Waltz" concert - of which I had tickets but to my everlasting chagrin couldn't go - (true story and it still pisses me off).  My lifelong anthem, "The Weight" is not on this particular album - it was on "Big Pink" - every single song on this album is a treasure and has personal meaning for me.  As I reach the twilight of my life - and as much as I love the Beatles and Stones and Clash - this group, it turns out, has been my lifelong favorite.  Perhaps one day I will write an entire blog post discussing each of their songs and why they are so important in the canon of American music.  It started in the fields and then the delta and through Charley Patton and Jimmie Rodgers and Hank Williams and there is a direct line right to "The Band".  What music...

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Number 7 - "London Calling". In college I considered myself kind of a cool kid and I knew music and was a bit jaded and then...punk music.  I was admittedly infatuated with the genre and really liked the Sex Pistols album when it came out but I was blown away, wiped out, by The Clash. Not only was the music new and cool but Joe Strummer and Mick Jones had a nearly Lennon/McCartney harmony that was compelling and fascinating and provocative as Hell.  As if they could be any more cool their politics were EXACTLY like mine  and, oh say,  Woody Guthrie's...People sometimes seemed surprised to find out that Woody was such an influence on Joe Strummer but, when you think about it, it's not much of a stretch. One of the most wonderful afternoons of my life was spent at the Santa Barbara County Bowl listening to the English Beat and then the remarkable Clash.  If you haven't given this album a listen in awhile then do so again and hear the musical revelations - and revolution. 

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The ice age is coming, the sun is zooming in
Engines stop running, the wheat is growin' thin
A nuclear era, but I have no fear
'Cause London is drowning, and I, I live by the river

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You know, there's a reason the call him "The Boss". Number 8 could have just as easily been "Born to Run" or "The River" but, nah, I gotta go with the one that knocked me for a lifetime personal loop, "Darkness at the Edge of Town". In this album Bruce cemented his place as America's next great along the Woody Guthrie/Bob Dylan line. Few albums in my life have been written that seemed to be expressing everything about my life - the feelings, the loss, my own personal faults, the injustice of the world, like "Darkness". It's as if Bruce channeled my mind and then expressed it musically. There is pain in this album - it's filled with pathos - but because, it's Springsteen, it has layers of hope and beauty...just enough to make it real and universal. Classics like, "Badlands", and “The Promised Land” are as good as contemporary music gets. "Factory" could have been written about my father, too. Each song has profound lyrical and musical depth. While I have given excerpts from previous songs from albums on the list this one is given in its entirety.

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"Darkness On The Edge Of Town"

They're still racing out at the Trestles, 
But that blood it never burned in her veins, 
Now I hear she's got a house up in Fairview, 
And a style she's trying to maintain. 
Well, if she wants to see me, 
You can tell her that I'm easily found, 
Tell her there's a spot out 'neath Abram's Bridge, 
And tell her, there's a darkness on the edge of town. 

Everybody's got a secret, Sonny, 
Something that they just can't face, 
Some folks spend their whole lives trying to keep it, 
They carry it with them every step that they take. 
Till some day they just cut it loose 
Cut it loose or let it drag 'em down, 
Where no one asks any questions, 
or looks too long in your face, 
In the darkness on the edge of town. 

Some folks are born into a good life, 
Other folks get it anyway, anyhow, 
I lost my money and I lost my wife, 
Them things don't seem to matter much to me now. 
Tonight I'll be on that hill 'cause I can't stop, 
I'll be on that hill with everything I got, 
Lives on the line where dreams are found and lost, 
I'll be there on time and I'll pay the cost, 
For wanting things that can only be found 
In the darkness on the edge of town.

For many years I could be found there in the darkness too.

​It took many years before another songwriter spoke to me like Bruce...and that's today's generation's Jason Isbell. I can't call him "influential" but he gets it...I could write an entire blog post on "Southeastern" but you should just listen to it instead. 

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I couldn't possibly write a post and not include my favorite album of the great Elvis Costello.   I read a review of him - got his first album, "My Aim Is True" but it was his next one, "This Year's Model" that must be included on this list at Number 9.  Elvis, to me, was such a rebel and a a "retro rebel" if that is a thing - His "Elvis" name and those Buddy Holly glasses and pigeon toed style of performing.  He was the man!  Young Elvis captured my angry young man years as well as anyone because he also was so damn pissed off...and cynical and condemning of modern society and it's emphasis on superficial values.  This album is flawless and one of the most brilliant ever produced. 
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​From, "This Year's Girl":

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See her picture in a thousand places 'cause she's this year's girl
You think you all own little pieces of this year's girl
Forget your fancy manners
Forget your English grammar
'Cause you don't really give a damn about this year's girl

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Number 10 - More Bob? Yep. Although I struggled with this last one.  I feel like I'm leaving out about a million albums that I love and, well, I kinda am.  I was just about to place "Document" by REM here but it wouldn't be a true indicator of "influential" to me and I simply couldn't do it.  Then there was, "Who's Next" and, as much as love it, I just didn't love it in the same way as my favorite Dylan album (I think it's my favorite - I equivocate a bit - tough choices there).  I do know that in high school all the cool kids were spinning "Blood On the Tracks" and I guess I was one of the cool kids.  This is Dylan at his balladeer best and not even my dad complained when I played it - which was daily for about, oh, ten years! I actually sang, "Tangled Up in Blue" when I was the Drama teacher at Rim of the World High School at the "talent show".  I'd like to emphasize that was my one and only public singing performance outside of drunk karaoke.  There are reasons I'm just a listener... 

A few years back I read that Bob simply said about the album that it was, "nothing but pain" and his son Jacob said it was the musical soundtrack to his parent's divorce.  I can certainly see that kind of sadness but there is also great storytelling to be found here as well as sweetness and love - especially with, "Shelter From the Storm" and "Simple Twist of Fate".  Of course, "If You See Her, say Hello" summed up my teenage romantic angst so aptly: 

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Sundown, yellow moon
I replay the past
I know every scene by heart
They all went by so fast
If she's passin' back this way
I'm not that hard to find
Tell her she can look me up
If she's got the time

So there you have it - I've taken several weeks to think about his and I'm not sure I've gotten it right and I suppose I'll second guess my choices but, today, it's the best I can do.  If you have similar tastes that's marvelous - if you don't well, that's OK, although I'd encourage you to keep listening  to new (and old!) music and go to concerts, maybe read a little music history and theory,  and, whatever you do, don't say, "Music died in the '60's or '70's" or...whatever. First, it's not true and secondly you're shortchanging not only some great artists but yourself as well.  In my experience people who say, "I know what I like" really are saying they "like what they know" and usually that isn't much.  Nothing speaks to our inner self - our soul - like the charms of a good song.  There's beauty and soul stirring melodies and words out there no matter your tastes...

If, like me,  you're compelled to get more into the "American Sound" I'd encourage you to start your journey by reading, "Mystery Train" by Greil Marcus. It'll put you on the right road.

Thanks for reading and I look forward to reading about your most influential albums.

​Now, go put on some tunes!