lifted from tracie: "What would you pick as the ten albums that are most meaningful/personally significant/formative for you? They may not even be your favorite albums necessarily; just the ones that perfectly encapsulate or solidify a crucial time/place/phase for you."
some aren't albums, they might just be a single song, one isn't even that. hmm looks like i cant much trim it down under 11, so you get a bonus.
1) styx - mr. roboto
this was my first cassette. my aunt bought it for me for getting straight As on my report card. of course i bought it for the title song which is catchy as hell. later on when i was older i pulled it out for a listen and i then realized the whole thing is a concept album about technology and the greatness and evilness of it. some of the songs are terrible but some are kick ass
2) the rave til dawn compilation
3) moby - early underground
these were left at my apartment by the girlfriend at the time. they were my first real exposure to techno. i liked video game music and synthesized stuff with bleeps, bloops, and blips but didn't realize that it came as songs, as in stuff you could go purchase. i hit every record store around, but all had nothing, the indie stores looked at the tapes to look up the labels and said they might be able to order something but i wasn't too keen on that idea, i'd be stuck buying em even if they sucked.
i turned to the primordal internet searching for moar of this stuff. which led me to hyperreal which hosted small soundbites of various artists. imagine my amazement of downloading 20 seconds of the orb at 56k. this led me to mailing lists which in turn led to phone numbers of _real_ record stores. which leads me to:
4) hardfloor - funalogue
5) human resource - dominator (beltram mix)
while talking to someone at maybe future music in baltimore, i didn't have alot of ideas of what i wanted since i didn't know what to call the stuff. he was patient and super helpful, he played me probably 25 different songs and asked which ones i liked and didnt. one of the tracks off of hardfloor's funalogue album tore my head apart. MOAR MOAR MOAR. i ended up purchasing that one, a harthouse compilation, and he pulled some other stuff that was less memorable. the hardfloor opened my ears to the acid sound. i still listen to acid music all the time, i can't stop. also of great influence was joey beltram's mix of dominator. even today it is a powerful song. those stacked hoovers defined a sound that is hard to describe but done well can sure move a dance floor.
6) sonic youth - unknown cassette (not 100% sure it was sonic youth, but i think so)
this girl in study hall who in retrospect reminds me of ally sheedie's character in the breakfast club but more "punk" was listening to a walkman. it sounded like just racket and noise from behind her so i HAD to listen to this and see what it was about. it was loud. a massive wall of guitar and screaming with drum blasts to meter out the beats. i had heard metal at this point but was bewildered by this. where did this kind of stuff come from? was it really music? in any event it made me think about what really is music.
7) metallica - master of puppets
8) guns n roses - appetite for destruction
these 2 i heard around the same time hanging out with 2 local metalheads i went to school with. the GnR was pretty catchy stuff and reeled me in. it was fast. i realized i like my music fastfastfast. then they dropped master of puppets on me, it was dark, angry, broodingly ominous music. massive builds with amazing tension. dark melodies. it was fast chugging along at what seemed like the speed of light, then would drop tempo to nothing without sounding bad, i was perplexed. it would ebb to just a single guitar playing quietly, then drop onto my ears like a ton of bricks. i needed more of this shit.
9) randall / hype / andy c - back to back to back at forward in toronto
to this day i haven't seen a jungle lineup the likes of this one. dieselboy, a few others, some amazing MCs. 2-3 at a time on stage. probably 2000 people going apeshit in this room. oddly i went up to this party for the techno lineup. i barely went into that room quite honestly. this was the night i decided that why yes. yes, i do like jungle. at 9am when the lights went on people were SCREAMING for more. the promoter did parties in the US, canada, and europe at that time and said to me "you'd never see this in the US" and waved his arms out to the crowd. and 10 years later, i still haven't.
10) as big as love - self titled cassette
these guys were a local band i saw in youngstown all the time when i was in college, they were silly, had a sort of warped distorted REM thing going on. sort of like REM on angel dust. they only made one cassette, the production was ass, but the songs were great. their live performances were the best. the first time i saw them the singer had a manequin he stole from some store and danced with her and sang songs to her, then through the night their relationship broke down and in the end she was smashed to a million pieces.
11) janes addiction - nothings shocking
for some reason their song "coming down the mountain" was put on the headbangers ball one night. yes it had guitar and a vague distorted quality, but i wouldn't call it metal at all. it was a curious song, which led me to buy the cd which really tore apart what i thought music was and should be.
a few weeks ago i thought about doing something like this, but aiming for once a week writing about 1 significant event/song/dj set/party and what was so significant about it. i really should do that, writing this blog was really fun and brought back some great memories.
** a little later i thought of 3.5 more:
NIN - pretty hate machine, broken/fixed
nirvana- nevermind
not much to say about em other than they're great for when you're pissed off and wanna kill people.
