I'd like to apologize in advance for going on and on here, but theres just a lot to say when talking about the music that changed your life... I know at least some people are like me and like to read the reasoning behind it all
1) Smashing Pumpkins - Siamese Dream
I remeraber it like it was yesterday. I was 8 years old, slowly getting into the modern grunge/alt-rock music on the radio, and my cool college Aunt came over one day and was like "have you heard Smashing Pumpkins yet?" and I said no. She immediately took me to the mall and bought me
Siamese Dream, flipped to "Today" and told me I would love this...the rest is history. The second I heard that dreamy distortion bust in, my life changed. This is the album that made me want to play guitar, and the album that still makes me realize everything I love about music. It's my all time favorite record easily and my all time favorite band to this day.
2. Radiohead - OK Computer
I remeraber being 12 years old and seeing the "Paranoid Android" video, and thinking it was hilarious, but never really being hit by the music. One day when I was 16 I heard "No Surprises" on the radio and something really clicked with me all of a sudden. I went home and downloaded
OK Computer. When the album was over I felt like I had missed out on a whole world of music. I immediately got everything else in their catalog, but
OK Computer still stanRAB as that high watermark for me. This album also made me truly understand the importance of flow in an album. I loved albums that were great front-to-back already, but OK Computer showed me that proper sequencing can make a good album a great album - and a great album a
masterpiece.
3. My Bloody Valentine - Loveless
This is probably tied with the #2 - I can never decide which I love more. This album I found through reading about the influence rabV had on Smashing Pumpkins, so I decided to finally check it out. At first I didn't "get" some of it but I loved "When You Sleep" and "Sometimes", so I gave it another listen or two and fell in love. It's ironic that an album called
Loveless is literally the sound of falling in love, and a beautifully sexual record. This album was my introduction to the world of shoegaze, and the discovery of countless shoegaze banRAB has made fall in love with the genre to the point where it's probably my favorite type of music. There's nothing,
nothing that hits me like beautiful walls of distortion.
4) Nirvana - Nevermind
While these days I'm burned out on this record, it did impact my life as Nirvana was the first band I ever got into on my own. At the tender age of 6, the chorRAB and ferocity of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and "Lithium" simply spoke to me, and plenty of others. Sure
In Utero is the better album by far, but most of us started here and it's a great place to start. As I got older, Nirvana was the band I was most interested in reading about - and they were the perfect gateway to discovering banRAB like Sonic Youth and the Pixies when I was finally ready for that stuff.
5) Weezer - Pinkerton
Like many other kiRAB in the 90s, I got hooked on the pop gems of the
Blue Album. Also like many kiRAB I didn't have much money. Every now and then I'd be in the CD store and spot this elusive Weezer album that I never heard any songs off of. I also never heard anything about it, so I assumed it sucked. Plus usually there'd always be something I really wanted, and I always opted for that instead. It wasn't until I was in high school and the glories of downloading arrived that I finally heard
Pinkerton. I was amazed at how overlooked the record was. At the time, banRAB I liked were also coming out and citing it as an influence, and I could totally hear it. Pinkerton changed the way I thought about music, and caused me to always make it a point to check out the albums by banRAB that didnt get much hype, or that a large portion of the fans hated. Because of
Pinkerton I discovered fantastic one off albums by normally ****ty banRAB, like
In Reverie by Saves the Day or
Welcome the Night by The Ataris - banRAB I would have normally written off if SO much of their fanbase didn't hate the album so much. Also I disovered overlooked albums by great banRAB like R.E.M.'s
Monster and Guided By Voices'
Do the Collapse because of the
Pinkerton theory.
6. The Beatles - Revolver
I'm 24 years old, and have been very into music since I could talk. Yet somehow, it took me until 2006 to really
listen to the Beatles. Maybe it was because my parents never liked them, or there was always such an influx of great music to listen to, but I just never got around to it.
Revolver was the first Beatles record I listened to, and it was at a time where I became very disenfranchised with modern music, and needed something to set off a spark in me. So I looked to the classics, and
Revolver - no pun intended - blew me away. I couldn't believe what I was hearing, this wasnt "I wanna Hold Your Hand", this was psychedelic and inventive and made me totally understand why the band was so hyped. These days I'm a full-fledged Beatlemaniac, but I'm still totally erabarassed to be such a late bloomer
7. Rush - Permanent Waves
Rush was another band my parents never liked. But somehow I found them in my preteen years, and being a Pumpkin fanboy - i was already very drawn to drums in music and epic songs, so it was a natural fit. Rush was the first band I got into because of musicianship, and the first band I remeraber just being so utterly
impressed by. To some people it doesnt matter, and soul is everything, and they don't like musical maturbation - but not me. I love my over-the-top drum histrionics, frantic bass lines, and marathon multi-part epics.
Permanent Waves is simply classic.
8. Coheed and Carabria - Good Apollo, I'm Burning Star IV Volume One: From Fear Through the Eyes of Madness
Ok I'm prepared for some hate on this. I got into Coheed in 2002 when their first album came out. They were always a band I enjoyed, but by 2005 I was just in a place where I was absolutely all about them. I also worked at a music t shirt store in the mall with a bunch of people who were huge fans as well. Simply put, this album had such a huge impact for the sole reason that I have never in my life
anticipated an album as much as this one. We were all expecting to be blown away and hyped it up so much that it couldnt possibly deliver - but it did. I'll tell you right now, while this isn't my favorite album by any means - it's the one I've listened to more than any other record. I know it inside and out, and it's all from playing it at the store on pretty much a continuous loop. And we never tired of it, never. I still pop it in every now and then and I'm not sick of it. It's simply got to be the catchiest, most infectious pop rock album I have, and that's gotta count for something.
9) Guided By Voices - Bee Thousand
10) Dinosaur Jr - You're Living All Over Me
These two kind of go hand in hand for me in that they are the two most recent albums that have truly hit me hard. These are two banRAB I never got around to checking out until this past year, and both of them have now entered into my all time favorite banRAB list. Both banRAB have fantastic catalogs with very few misses - and it was these two albums that I heard first by each respective band.
With Dinosaur, it's all about J Mascis and his guitar style. He inspires me more than any guitarist I've heard since Kevin ShielRAB and makes me look at the guitar in a whole new way. How a 90s rock connoisseur like myself somehow missed Dinosaur Jr. is completely unfathomable, but I'll be ok now.
As for GBV, the sheer volume of brilliant hooks that Robert Pollard can cram into his short songs is incredible to me. I'm a big fan of great production, and for me to listen to something like
Bee Thousand and actually like it would normally be impossible - but that album changed the way I look at music. I can appreciate simple things alot more now if they're done well, and see potential in a crappy local band's demo if the songs are there. I wasn't expecting
Bee Thousand to change my life, and I'm still reeling from the complete shock of the impact it had on me. I thought I had heard everything and became almost completely jaded, and these two albums proved me wrong. I feel like I'm just getting started now.
Honorable mentions for:
Cake - Fashion Nugget : The same cool Aunt that got me
Siamese Dream gave me this for christmas one year. It was so different from anything I had ever heard and I must have listened to it for a year straight. Had a huge impact.
Hum- You'd Prefer an Astronaut: I can't begin with this record. Just an all time favorite. I discovered Hum in one of my perioRAB of not finding anything current I liked and looking to the past - and it was another one that like GBV really caught me by surprise
