In Response to zamphir (#25363):

Radiohead sucks.

Leave it to zamphir to break one of the rules.

I think I'm going to keep the list to CDs that I actually own; however; I'm going to throw in one that I don't own because it's fucking awesome.

In alphabetical order by artist:

Fiona Apple - When the Pawn
Cake - Prolonging the Magic
Coldplay - A Rush Of Blood To The Head
Cure,The - The Cure
Greenday - Shenanigans
Modest Mouse - Good News (for people who love bad news)
Postal Service - Give Up
Queens of the Stone Age - Songs for the Deaf
Radiohead - The Bends
*Smashing Pumpkins - Melancholy and the Infinite Saddness

Rant if you must!
Europe 72 The Grateful Dead
L.A. Woman The Doors
Katy Lied Steely Dan
Fly Like an Eagle Steve Miller
Dark Side of the Moon Pink Floyd
Déjà vu CSNY
Sticky Fingers The Rolling Stones (Can’t you hear me knocking! My favorite)
Rumors Fleetwood Mac
Losing My Religion R.E.M.
Volunteers Jefferson Airplane

Alphabetical order by artist. My ten are the ones that through the years have meant something or are associated with fond memories. I have all of them and I have listened to most of them within the last year.
Dirty deed done dirt cheap - AC/DC
Sgt Pepper’s - The Beatles
When I fall in love – Sam Cooke
Live in New York City – John Lennon
Tosca – Hungarian State Opera
The Wall – Pink Floyd
A night at the opera – Queen
Automatic for the people – R.E.M.
2112 – Rush
Under a blood red sky – U2

London Calling. Crap, how could I forget London Calling?

Zamphir, I am fascinated by your call. Pogues better without the drunk guy? I assumed that any non-McGowan albums would automatically suck.

Lets see, in no particular order (and I dont have all of these offhand either) here's my listing of albums Mr. T says you should own, foo!

E. Powers Biggs Plays Bach - In its original quadrophonic vinyl
Moby, The Collected B Sides
Groove Armada, Lovebox
INXS, Kicks
Live, Throwing Copper
Collective Soul, selftitled
Bernstein Century compliation of Aaron Copland
Amélie soundtrack
News at Eleven: Have You Not Heard [newsateleven.com] - gratuitous plug
Molotov, ¿Donde jugarán las niñas?

In Response to deerboy (#25371):

Zamphir, I am fascinated by your call. Pogues better without the drunk guy? I assumed that any non-McGowan albums would automatically suck.

You said "albums", not "bands". Drunk guys may help make very good songs... but they can be disruptive in making very good albums...

This list is largely my mother's fault. But more importantly, it's so fucking random I can't begin to explain why. Basically, this is music for every mood. In no order whatsoever:

• Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk, by Rufus Wainwright
• Automatic for the People, by R.E.M.
• Born to Run, by Bruce Springsteen
• Fly, by the Dixie Chicks
• Live Noise, by Moxy Früvous
• Unplugged, by Eric Clapton
• Gorillaz, by Gorillaz
• Cocoon Crash, by K's Choice
• Who's Next, by the Who
• Bridge over Troubled Water, by Simon and Garfunkel


--
While I find our conversation fascinating, I also find you terrifying, unpredictable, and armed.

In Response to GeminiCrash (#25365):

Leave it to zamphir to break one of the rules.

The rule, as stated, was "No making fun of other people’s taste. "

I didn't make fun of people, or their taste, for liking Radiohead.

I said "Radiohead sucks", which is merely a comment on my own taste.

In no particular, order, other than the fact that the first disk is the one that I could listen to forever and not ever get tired of.

XTC, Mummer
Barenaked Ladies, Born On A Pirate Ship
The Who, Who's Next
Frank Zappa, You Can't Do That On Stage Anymore, Vol 1.
Peter Gabriel, Plays Live
Marillion, Childhood's End
Spirit of the West, Labour Day
Dire Straits, Dire Straits
Richard Thompson, Action Packed
The Police, Ghost In The Machine
 

In Response to Dynedain (#25373):

News at Eleven: Have You Not Heard? - gratuitous plug

Nice.

In Response to Clan_Hanna (#25389):

8 seconds and I'm ready for the ultraviolence. Who needs electric guitars?

This is a list of my albums which i would most wish to hear while at the highest points in my life. It was terribly difficult to whittle down hundreds of items to about fifty, then to just these here.

My first criteria was: Albums Only; no compilations, no anthologies, no EPs, no maxi-singles; just strictly long-play albums. This was an arbitrary choice, but i thought it would be more meaningful if i avoided inclusion of anything which could not be ascribed to a specific artist or group of artists performing together.

My second criteria was: Drug Test. Each of these albums must be incredibly pleasurable not just when i've been stoned on fifteen milligrams of THC, not just when i was enhanced by thirty milligrams of MDMA, and not just when i was in a hallucinatory blur or a Waking Dream-state induced by one thousand micrograms of LSD; they must be intensely beautiful not just when i was influenced by simultaneous combinations of large doses of these and other chemicals-- they must also be delightful when i'm completely sober and unmodified.

My third criteria was the Test Of Time: none of these albums are brand new (although none are more than fifteen years old) because i need to be assured of their staying power. I only included those which i guarantee will still be enjoyable six months from now when you listen to them again, and ten years from now when you hear them again, and so forth.

I still had a list of several dozen titles, so i finally had to use arbitrary personal preference with no particular criteria in order to select just these few. I could probably explain why each item is one of my favorites for many reasons, but i can't make any sort of generalization. This list just shows what sort of sounds i love.

If anybody besides jettaboy20 [goats.com] has ever heard of more than ten of these, i'd be shocked and amazed. Then i'd be eager to check out your CD collection, as we wriggle around in the surround-sound field, getting high, singing and squirming.

• Irresistible Force (MixMaster Morris) - "Global Chillage", "Flying High", and "It's Tomorrow Already"
• Pizzicato Five - "Happy End of the World"
• Ozric Tentacles - "Spice Doubt (streaming - A Gig in the Ether)", "Swirly Termination", and "The Hidden Step"
• Eat Static - "Epsylon", and "Science of the Gods"
• Virtualizer - "Sex Technologie = The Future", and Virtualizer revisited - "Acid Warriors Dream Crystals"
• Drum Club - "Drums Are Dangerous"
• Starseeds - "Parallel Life", and "There Is Enough For Everyone"
• Torch Song (William Orbit) - "Toward the Unknown Region"
• HumanMeshDance - "thesecretnumbertwelve"
• Banco de Gaia - "Igizeh"
• System 7 - "System 7.3: Fire + Water",and "Power of 7"
• the Orb - "Orbus Terrarum", and "Cydonia"
• Amon Tobin - "Supermodified", and "Bricolage"
• Underworld - "second toughest in the infants", and "Beaucoup Fish"
• Hardkiss brothers - "Delusions of Grandeur"
• SpaceTime Continuum (Jonah Sharp) - "Double Fine Zone"
• Ken Ishii - "Sleeping Madness"
• Deee-Lite - "Dewdrops in the Garden", and "Infinity Within"
• Fatboy Slim - "Halfway Between the Gutter and the Stars"

The list is in no particular order.

In Response to gtyrrell (#25386):

I love Mummer by XTC. I also enjoy listening to Skylarking and Nonsuch every now and then. I can recite "Ballet for a Rainy Day/1000 Umbrellas" and "Ugly Underneath" almost word for word.

But i think my all-time favorite XTC album is Oranges and Lemons. It's sort of like The Beatles and The Beach Boys had bastard love-children with an orchestra and three minstrels; the bastard love-children would then go on to learn how to play their instruments with even more finesse than their parents.

In Response to Nagy_Vilmos (#25368):

Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band was my favorite album when i was about nine years old. It had more hooks than a tackle-box. "Within You Without You" still gives me happy tingles.

In Response to sentdata (#25367):

When i was a teenager, i owned every Fleetwood Mac album created between 1969 and 1987. They were a pop-band in most ways, but there were parts of Tusk and Rumours which stood out among their contemporaries.

In Response to GeminiCrash (#25365):

I used to have four or five albums by The Cure.

On the day in 1990 when i received the positive HIV test results from the Department of Public Health, i went home and listened to Disintegration. Hearing Robert Smith sing and moan, it was easier to permit myself to go ahead and cry, overcoming years of training to suppress emotion, and getting past my childish machismo conditioning at the age of twenty.

I gave away my albums by The Cure to some friends when i moved a few years later, and i felt the urge to reduce the physical size of my music collection. I did save a tape with copies of a few of their songs which were my favorites.

Nowadays, when i feel gloomy, i'd usually rather not listen to that sort of sad New Wave stuff. I've found other varieties of ambience and melody to fit my moods.

Here's a top ten list. I'm away from my collection right now, so here's the top ten albums I listen to at work, according to my mp3 player:

10. Jeff Buckley, Grace
9. Firewater, Psychopharmacology
8. Spacehog, Resident Alien
7. Dave Brubeck et al, Time Out
6. Dead Kennedys, Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables
5. The Eels, Souljacker
4. The Clash, London Calling
3. Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros, Global a Go-Go
2. The Eels, Electroshock Blues
1. Firewater, The Ponzi Scheme

In Response to zamphir (#25363):

Strange Angels was my favorite album by Laurie Anderson. I think i still have a VHS copy of Home of the Brave on a shelf somewhere. Life on a String is pretty nice, too.

My best friend Shawn and i saw her intense multimedia performance live at the Flynn Theater in Burlington, Vermont, in 1994. Years later, in May of 2002, Shawn took me to see her at the Flynn for a second time. I was packing up and getting ready to move away from Vermont, to Bellingham, Washington, on the other side of the continent. Shawn was trying to squeeze in lots of last minute activities before i was gone-- going out to restaurants, seeing Laurie Anderson, visiting common friends all week.

Ten or eleven days later, a day or two after i arrived in Western Washington, my friends in Vermont called to ask if i had heard from Shawn, because he was missing. They found his body a week later, where he had killed himself way out in the woods in a remote part of the wilderness.

I realized that he hadn't just been saying "goodbye" to me all week before i left Vermont-- he had been saying "goodbye" to everyone, in a way, and nobody had realized his intent.

I sometimes find it a little difficult to listen to Laurie Anderson nowadays because most of her stuff like "Tightrope" just reminds me of his goodbye. I prefer to reminisce about happier times with him, when we would listen to Deee-Lite, Towa Tei, William Orbit, and the Hardkiss brothers, tripping on acid and/or ecstasy, having so much fun.

In Response to Teledildonix (#25398):

Tightrope is mostly about her own near-death experience mountain climbing.

So it's not surprising, and a mark of her artistic abilities, that it reminds you too much of the death of a friend.

I'm expecting that after another six or eight runs through of Life on a String, that I'll actually understand it enough to know if I like it or not.

But I picked Strange Angels for a bunch of reasons - one of which is that it's so enjoyable to listen to.

In Response to unFalln (#25359):

Remember the Pediatric Autism specialist who was into versatile fisting with me? The one whom i stopped seeing because he was married and i didn't want to run into issues with his wife and family? I tried to introduce the good doctor to as broad a selection of music as possible, choosing dozens of different items across all the spectra of my taste, giving him copies of about fifty or sixty albums.

He said, "So much of it sounds repetitive to me." That boggled my mind. I realized it was all a matter of taste, but was nevertheless astonished by such an opinion. How could someone so smart appear to have such a narrow sense of musical appreciation?

In return, he gave me a copy of Hail to the Thief by Radiohead. I listened to it several times, but i couldn't find any remarkably memorable melodies, no exciting rhythms, and i couldn't feel a personal connection to the "poetry". But i didn't want to throw it away, because it certainly wasn't a bad album-- just not interesting, because of my personal preferences. Fortunately, i know someone online who loves Radiohead. So i sent it to them, and they were really happy with it.

I like some true stories with happy endings, even if the ending has nothing to do with the beginning.

I enjoyed R.E.M. during my first year in college, back when i was seventeen. I didn't know anything about their politics, i just liked some of their melodies ("Orange Crush" still sticks in my head once in a great while).

Years later, when Michael Stipe came out of the closet, i wasn't surprised, but i had also lost interest in his music already. I could still enjoy most of it, but i was way beyond the point where i would ever buy any of it anymore.

Nowadays whenever i hear one of their old songs like "Losing My Religion", i associate it with the distant past, when i was still a teenager, and i had yet to discover very different (and perhaps slightly more complicated) artistry. I think R.E.M. made some very nice stuff, but it just reminds me how old i'm getting.

About fifteen years ago, i stopped buying any album that was following the old recipe of standard-combo-band. If the music is made up of a few guitars, some percussion, some keyboard, one or more vocalists, and a couple of acoustic instruments like a horn, sax, or whatever... well, it might be pleasant music, but it's just so thirty-years-ago. That doesn't mean i won't like it, it just means i wouldn't bother buying any of it. It has to be more creative in order for me to seriously covet it.

I, myself, have little or no creativity. But i love the creations of hundreds of clever, fun-loving, inspired artists. I guess that's part of why i enjoyed being a dj at WRUV for a few years.

In Response to Teledildonix (#25402):

I have a similar problem. All of the books I have words printed on paper using sentences with some combination of verb, noun, the lot, sometimes an adjective thrown in, all made using typewriters or word processors. That is so 19th century. Nobody has done anything remarkably creative using sentences in hundreds of years. That's why I stopped reading books. Now I just read random words scrambled my a computer. Everything else is not creative enough for me.