These albums are not really in any order either, they just are, period.
Since I am, usually, a fat boy with a big voice, I should start with someone most 
would think I was seperated from birth, if it wasn't the fact he was much older than I. Much of the older music, and I speak of seventies, sixties and fifties as older, that I heard and was influenced, came from album rock stations. The main one I listened to, and still do from time to time, is WRIF in Detroit. It was this station who was responsible in opening my ears to these veteran rockers, such as Meat Loaf, to the right there, and Bat out of Hell. Being a disciple of RHPS doesn't help either as it showed me that I didn't need to be a skinny pretty boy to sing rock music especially when I found out I too had the range for the title track and "Two Out of Three Ain't Bad." Every song on this album rocks and every one of them can also bring a tear to your eye. Jim Stienman was the perfect writer, Meat was the perfect voice.
would think I was seperated from birth, if it wasn't the fact he was much older than I. Much of the older music, and I speak of seventies, sixties and fifties as older, that I heard and was influenced, came from album rock stations. The main one I listened to, and still do from time to time, is WRIF in Detroit. It was this station who was responsible in opening my ears to these veteran rockers, such as Meat Loaf, to the right there, and Bat out of Hell. Being a disciple of RHPS doesn't help either as it showed me that I didn't need to be a skinny pretty boy to sing rock music especially when I found out I too had the range for the title track and "Two Out of Three Ain't Bad." Every song on this album rocks and every one of them can also bring a tear to your eye. Jim Stienman was the perfect writer, Meat was the perfect voice.Next is o
ne of my favorite, of not my most favorite, bands of all time, Queen. The hard thing about Queen is choosing an album that stands from all the rest. Even Hot Space has it's own brilliance, even though you have to really look for it. Again, these guys have, like, several versions of Greatest Hits albums which tend to detract from their studio work. But, from the daringness of their first album, their desperation from Queen II, finding their musical voice in Sheer Heart Attack, even their pop metal boldness with News of the World and Jazz, I keep coming back to two of them. One is A Day at the Races, but even more astonding to me is A Night at the Opera, and not just because "Bohemian Rhapsody" is on it and my most favorite song of all time, hands down. It has "Love of My Life," one of the few Freddie Mercury vocals I can keep in my range, "You're My Best Friend," a ballad that just comes out of left field for the listener, "I'm in Love With My Car," a song you really have to be careful with while you're driving, and the dirty sounding, depressing laiden "The Prophet's Song." Along with all the different quirky instruments the band put into this album it's always remained tops with me.
ne of my favorite, of not my most favorite, bands of all time, Queen. The hard thing about Queen is choosing an album that stands from all the rest. Even Hot Space has it's own brilliance, even though you have to really look for it. Again, these guys have, like, several versions of Greatest Hits albums which tend to detract from their studio work. But, from the daringness of their first album, their desperation from Queen II, finding their musical voice in Sheer Heart Attack, even their pop metal boldness with News of the World and Jazz, I keep coming back to two of them. One is A Day at the Races, but even more astonding to me is A Night at the Opera, and not just because "Bohemian Rhapsody" is on it and my most favorite song of all time, hands down. It has "Love of My Life," one of the few Freddie Mercury vocals I can keep in my range, "You're My Best Friend," a ballad that just comes out of left field for the listener, "I'm in Love With My Car," a song you really have to be careful with while you're driving, and the dirty sounding, depressing laiden "The Prophet's Song." Along with all the different quirky instruments the band put into this album it's always remained tops with me.Now, when talking about different, this band should always come to mind. As the eigh
ties progressed, so did I, comes with struggling to grow up, I opened up to more alternative music by accident, and They Might Be Giants were at the front of the line. Say what you might about this band, their album Flood fucking rules. Yeah, yeah, "Istandul, Not Constantanople" is what most people remember (Thanx for MTV playing the living shit out of it), others, because they like "Tiny Toons" may also get "Particle Man." There are other songs like "Birdhouse in Your Soul," "Minimun Wage," and "Whistling in the Dark," which I sing time to time to this day. This is an album that the songs will grab onto your head and play over and over again; but in a good way.
ties progressed, so did I, comes with struggling to grow up, I opened up to more alternative music by accident, and They Might Be Giants were at the front of the line. Say what you might about this band, their album Flood fucking rules. Yeah, yeah, "Istandul, Not Constantanople" is what most people remember (Thanx for MTV playing the living shit out of it), others, because they like "Tiny Toons" may also get "Particle Man." There are other songs like "Birdhouse in Your Soul," "Minimun Wage," and "Whistling in the Dark," which I sing time to time to this day. This is an album that the songs will grab onto your head and play over and over again; but in a good way.Speaking of the 
eighties, you cannot think of that decade without seeing the hair bands, and there were a lot of them, some good, some not so good, and some really sucked. I would be lying if I said that I didn't get caught up in that shit, I still had long hair up to the turn of the century and I wrote lyrics for glam rock tunes back then. Nowadays I call it poetry. (Meh) Anyway, my biggest influence there was the band Def Leppard, and specifically, Hysteria. Every song on this album rocked, every song on this album had the potential to be a hit single, though I still have no idea why they decided "Women" should be the first one, but, oh well, they still recovered. Six other songs were released in the States as singles, all of them cracked the top 20, four of them cracked the top ten, one going to number three, on going to number two and one hitting number one, the ballad "Love Bites" of course, even though I thought "Pour Some Sugar On Me" should have hit the top spot too. You can't avoid the numbers for the time, no could you really avoid how the songs rocked; even "Women." They also had fun remixing songs (I did find a few back in the day.), released some live tracks and even had a roadie do one song which I do at karaoke every once in a while in the style of Stumpus Maximus. The singles B-sides, just as hard to acquire because at first they didn't release cassette singles, just 45's. Still, to this day, one of the best unreleased songs out there, I think, is "Run Riot." If you haven't gotten this album yet, you should.
eighties, you cannot think of that decade without seeing the hair bands, and there were a lot of them, some good, some not so good, and some really sucked. I would be lying if I said that I didn't get caught up in that shit, I still had long hair up to the turn of the century and I wrote lyrics for glam rock tunes back then. Nowadays I call it poetry. (Meh) Anyway, my biggest influence there was the band Def Leppard, and specifically, Hysteria. Every song on this album rocked, every song on this album had the potential to be a hit single, though I still have no idea why they decided "Women" should be the first one, but, oh well, they still recovered. Six other songs were released in the States as singles, all of them cracked the top 20, four of them cracked the top ten, one going to number three, on going to number two and one hitting number one, the ballad "Love Bites" of course, even though I thought "Pour Some Sugar On Me" should have hit the top spot too. You can't avoid the numbers for the time, no could you really avoid how the songs rocked; even "Women." They also had fun remixing songs (I did find a few back in the day.), released some live tracks and even had a roadie do one song which I do at karaoke every once in a while in the style of Stumpus Maximus. The singles B-sides, just as hard to acquire because at first they didn't release cassette singles, just 45's. Still, to this day, one of the best unreleased songs out there, I think, is "Run Riot." If you haven't gotten this album yet, you should. I'll admit, Flood is the only album that was released past the eighties, most of wha
t I have right here are either seventies or eighties as that decade is where my primary influence of what I write about is derived. When it comes to music changing perspective, I'll throw Metallica right into the discussion. Well before you heard the Metallica of now, back then, the Metallica I remember was one who created albums of groid kicked, ear bleeding metal and no music vides, just concert after concert. The epitome of this early time is Master of Puppets. To this date I believe is their best work ever. I still have the 33 it was pressed on and finally got the title track onto my MP3 player. Yeah, my kids can deal when I fucking play it loud in my car!
The next fo
ur fall back to the concept album. It's a format I really love because it's like reading a book with music, except the story goes faster because you're listening to it. The first one is probably the oddest, weirdest one of the batch, but it is also one that combines music loosely around the concept of science fiction, something else that interests me greatly, and probably takes a side route through an acid trip. Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars is probably the best conceptual work that David Bowie has ever done but the lyrics are so ambiguous that you need to listen to it over and over again to try to grasp onto the albums meaning...but you can't. Hence the beauty of this album, you'll never know what you'll get from this album be it when you are sober, drunk, stoned, high, or all three of the latter. The title track, be it a musical epilogue, is still a little haunting to me, and sad.
t I have right here are either seventies or eighties as that decade is where my primary influence of what I write about is derived. When it comes to music changing perspective, I'll throw Metallica right into the discussion. Well before you heard the Metallica of now, back then, the Metallica I remember was one who created albums of groid kicked, ear bleeding metal and no music vides, just concert after concert. The epitome of this early time is Master of Puppets. To this date I believe is their best work ever. I still have the 33 it was pressed on and finally got the title track onto my MP3 player. Yeah, my kids can deal when I fucking play it loud in my car!The next fo
ur fall back to the concept album. It's a format I really love because it's like reading a book with music, except the story goes faster because you're listening to it. The first one is probably the oddest, weirdest one of the batch, but it is also one that combines music loosely around the concept of science fiction, something else that interests me greatly, and probably takes a side route through an acid trip. Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars is probably the best conceptual work that David Bowie has ever done but the lyrics are so ambiguous that you need to listen to it over and over again to try to grasp onto the albums meaning...but you can't. Hence the beauty of this album, you'll never know what you'll get from this album be it when you are sober, drunk, stoned, high, or all three of the latter. The title track, be it a musical epilogue, is still a little haunting to me, and sad.Next album may have not been the first concept album, but it is responsible for li
ghting the wick that spawned others, including by this same band who made this one, The Who, and their rock opera Tommy. Now being a child of the eighties I was more visual that those seventies counterparts. Television cable was really coming into it's own to mush our minds out with silly garbage and HBO was really popular so you got to see movies that you wouldn't normally see in the theaters. My first exposure to Tommy was the movie version, sadly. To admit, the album is much more personal and more inspiring than the movie from the seventies, though it's not really an opera, more an oratorio, but I digress. It's my most favorite album from The Who and belongs as one of my ten most favorite of all time just as much as there are times that "Pinball Wizard" just cannot escape my mind.
ghting the wick that spawned others, including by this same band who made this one, The Who, and their rock opera Tommy. Now being a child of the eighties I was more visual that those seventies counterparts. Television cable was really coming into it's own to mush our minds out with silly garbage and HBO was really popular so you got to see movies that you wouldn't normally see in the theaters. My first exposure to Tommy was the movie version, sadly. To admit, the album is much more personal and more inspiring than the movie from the seventies, though it's not really an opera, more an oratorio, but I digress. It's my most favorite album from The Who and belongs as one of my ten most favorite of all time just as much as there are times that "Pinball Wizard" just cannot escape my mind.Speaking a
bout concepts and concept albums, I cannot leave out Pink Floyd; and I'm talking Pink Floyd with Roger Waters. If there is a band who I can listen to and feel strange without a controlled substance, Pink Floyd is that band. They are also another band who, throught the magic of televison's HBO, I got my first glimpse of with The Wall. ::Shivers:: That is what I knew of Pink Floyd until I finally put Dark Side of the Moon on the turntable and all of the sudden The Wall really didn't cut it for my anymore. I cannot and will not listen to only part of this album, I MUST listen to the ENTIRE thing, and that's not because of Dark Side of the Rainbow. Meh! It's just because that album stands on it's own with all the songs connected. Whether they were meant to be together or not, somehow that is the way it is, and even when they released "Money" as a single, it really detracts from the album. People who are close to me know well, when I put the album on it will be a while until it's done.
bout concepts and concept albums, I cannot leave out Pink Floyd; and I'm talking Pink Floyd with Roger Waters. If there is a band who I can listen to and feel strange without a controlled substance, Pink Floyd is that band. They are also another band who, throught the magic of televison's HBO, I got my first glimpse of with The Wall. ::Shivers:: That is what I knew of Pink Floyd until I finally put Dark Side of the Moon on the turntable and all of the sudden The Wall really didn't cut it for my anymore. I cannot and will not listen to only part of this album, I MUST listen to the ENTIRE thing, and that's not because of Dark Side of the Rainbow. Meh! It's just because that album stands on it's own with all the songs connected. Whether they were meant to be together or not, somehow that is the way it is, and even when they released "Money" as a single, it really detracts from the album. People who are close to me know well, when I put the album on it will be a while until it's done.Now this one came to me at a very odd time. I found this band inadvertantly when I was going to Graceland College and a friend 
of mine in the dorm I stayed couldn't stop praising them so I decided to borrow one of their albums. Granted the style to me was overmelodic and odd at the time and their singer tended to whine a little with the lyrics the songs were nonetheless, intriguing. When I went home on a short break I went to the record store and picked up the three CD's that were before the album I listened. The one that still stands out with me, as it did back then, was Misplaced Childhood, the band was Marillion. This band has never had the success in the states that they had in England but their music is very good and to me, like the previous album, Misplaced Childhood feels like a concept album to me. and "Kayleigh," their only hit in the states that ever charted, is not my most favorite of the album, neither is "Lavender." "Heart of Lothian" is what strikes a chord with me. A very underrated album that I would suggest any music conniseur should have.
of mine in the dorm I stayed couldn't stop praising them so I decided to borrow one of their albums. Granted the style to me was overmelodic and odd at the time and their singer tended to whine a little with the lyrics the songs were nonetheless, intriguing. When I went home on a short break I went to the record store and picked up the three CD's that were before the album I listened. The one that still stands out with me, as it did back then, was Misplaced Childhood, the band was Marillion. This band has never had the success in the states that they had in England but their music is very good and to me, like the previous album, Misplaced Childhood feels like a concept album to me. and "Kayleigh," their only hit in the states that ever charted, is not my most favorite of the album, neither is "Lavender." "Heart of Lothian" is what strikes a chord with me. A very underrated album that I would suggest any music conniseur should have.
And finally, and I know y'all will snicker at me, the last album on my list. As I have stated throughout this blog, I'm a child of the eighties, and around the time where I was starting to become very impressonable, this album was the shit, hands down. Michael Jackson's Thriller. Yes, I know he got really strange in his later years, but this album is what put him over the top into legendary status and the ridicule that comes with it. You cannot deny the songs that altered the momentum of music, including "Beat It," "Billie Jean," and "Thriller" itself. And at the time, the video for "Thriller" was off the charts. I still play that song as loud as I fucking can during Halloween, at least once, as to tradition. And with Vincent Price's voice laid in with it, the creepiness factor should be at an eleven, because it was back then. It's also the album responsible for keeping Def Leppard's Pyromania from being number one and became the best selling album of all time, beating out Pink Floyd's The Wall from merely a few years before.Well that's it; my thoughts and feelings about popular music. I'm sure there are other albums worthy of choosing but these are the ones who have staked a claim on my soul to be remembered as "definitive." I've sure I'll see the "you're wrong" comments, but maybe I am. This is a blog of my opinions after all.
H.R. Green, 20th of November, 2009, 3:27 p.m., Burtchville, MI
No comments:
Post a Comment