Magick: Book 4 -
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. Love is the law, love under will.
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Wednesday, 9 September 2015
quote [ Take 15 minutes to list 15 albums you'll never forget and will always stick with you. List why the album will stick with you, because really, who wants to just read lists. ]
It's a stupid Facebook meme that's wound up hugely popular in my social circle - and it's genuinely fascinating to see what people love and why. This isn't a "list your top fifteen", any fifteen will do - so long as they were memorable and influenced you, and yes, that includes albums that negatively influenced you as well.
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arrowhen said @ 12:37am GMT on 10th September
15 is a tricky number. It's easy to come up with a top five, but when you go further than that it's hard to narrow it down from, like, a top 200. In no particular order...
"Weird Al" Yankovic -- In 3D
This was the very first album I ever bought. The first of many. Shortly thereafter was my first ever argument with some moron about how my favorite artist was an underrated genius and their musical tastes were stupid and wrong. The first of many.
Joy Division -- The Peel Sessions
I like everything Joy Division ever did, but this is them at their best. Unencumbered by Martin Hannett's wanky, cocaine-addled overproduction and the sloppiness and technical difficulties that often marred their live performances, this is like being a fly on the wall at a really good rehearsal session.
The Cure -- Pornography
The absolute pinnacle of depressing 80s music, this album will make you miserable if you're happy or happy if you're miserable. The albums before this were good, and even during their pathetic 30 year descent into fat old jam band territory afterwards the put out a couple of good numbers, but for me this is the album that will always be synonymous with The Cure.
The Accüsed -- Martha Splatterhead's Maddest Stories Ever Told
I was in high school when this album came out in 1988. At my school, you might like punk or metal, but never both. The punk kids and metal kids hung out together, because there weren't enough weird kids to sustain multiple weird music cliques, but we never listened to each other's music. By 1989 every kid who owned more than three black tee shirts had a copy of this album, and no one thought it was weird to skateboard to a mix-tape that had both Dead Kennedys and, like, Nuclear Assault or whatever on it.
Operation Ivy -- Energy
Yeah, yeah, I know, ska-core. This one was good, though. In my early adult years I got through many long shifts at various shitty industrial temp jobs by singing basically this entire album in my head.
The Tear Garden -- Tired Eyes Slowly Burning
A side project by members of Skinny Puppy and The Legendary Pink Dots; imagine an alternate universe where Pink Floyd first formed in 1986 and recorded The Piper at the Gates of Dawn with synthesizers instead of guitars. The standout track is the 16 minute "You and Me and Rainbows", an epic yet at the same time harrowingly ordinary personal tragedy of love, loss, and the hope for redemption under the shadow of addiction.
Sonic Youth -- Sister
If you could convert Philip K. Dick's brain into sound waves, this would be the result.
Subhumans -- The Day the Country Died
A lot of 80s anarcho-punk can be pretty dour stuff, grim accounts of the struggle to survive with your ideals intact beneath the crushing weight of Reagan/Thatcher conformity. The Subhumans never forgot that just because you want to fight the system and smash the state doesn't mean you're not allowed to have a good time.
Led Zeppelin -- Led Zeppelin II
Anyone from Seattle who's never fucked to a Led Zeppelin album is secretly from Portland.
Hardfloor -- TB Resuscitation
This is less "listening to an album" and more "plugging a meditation chip into your cranial jack to defrag your brain."
Dead Kennedys -- Plastic Surgery Disasters
Their earlier stuff was good but inconsistent, and too much of their later work was just the band noodling for ten minutes behind Jello's meandering rants, but this album was laser focused: tightly crafted, insightful lyrics and top-notch musicianship with just the right blend of energy and variety.
Hammerbox -- Hammerbox
Name any Seattle grunge band in existence in 1990 and I probably saw Hammerbox open for them at least once, probably in a shitty little venue where we all looked at each other like, "What the fuck? These guys are way too good to be playing here!" before jumping in the pit and moshing our fool heads off. In a better world, this band would have been huge. I just think that the combination of powerful yet melodic female vocals and musicians who could actually play their instruments very well fell too far outside the narrow definition of "grunge" that the major labels decided to package up and sell to the rest of the world.
(My brush with stardom: the guitar player for Hammerbox once asked me to fetch a roll of duct tape for them while they were setting up for a show at the OK Hotel.)
Black Sabbath -- Paranoid
Crushing riffs, pounding drums, lyrics about war and the devil. Pretty standard stuff, right? Except this was nineteen fucking seventy and everyone else was still strumming acoustic guitars and singing about flowers and unicorns and shit.
U2 -- October
All throughout high school, whenever I first met a girl I liked, I'd end up going for a bike ride with October in my Walkman. I never planned it that way, it was never "Oh, hey, I like a girl, time to go listen to U2 on a bicycle," but it was still an inevitable part of the process. Coasting slightly too fast down a hill to the opening piano part from "I Fall Down"? Yup, that's exactly what a new crush feels like.
Sinéad O'Connor -- The Lion and the Cobra
I once called the local college radio station and scolded the DJ for pronouncing "Sinéad" wrong. That's the kind of shit we did back when there was no internet.
arrowhen said @ 12:42am GMT on 10th September
15 is a tricky number. It's easy to come up with a top five, but when you go further than that it's hard to narrow it down from, like, a top 200. In no particular order...
"Weird Al" Yankovic -- In 3D
This was the very first album I ever bought. The first of many. Shortly thereafter was my first ever argument with some moron about how my favorite artist was an underrated genius and their musical tastes were stupid and wrong. The first of many.
Joy Division -- The Peel Sessions
I like everything Joy Division ever did, but this is them at their best. Unencumbered by Martin Hannett's wanky, cocaine-addled overproduction and the sloppiness and technical difficulties that often marred their live performances, this is like being a fly on the wall at a really good rehearsal session.
The Cure -- Pornography
The absolute pinnacle of depressing 80s music, this album will make you miserable if you're happy or happy if you're miserable. The albums before this were good, and even during their pathetic 30 year descent into fat old jam band territory afterwards they put out a couple of good numbers, but for me this is the album that will always be synonymous with The Cure.
The Accüsed -- Martha Splatterhead's Maddest Stories Ever Told
I was in high school when this album came out in 1988. At my school, you might like punk or metal, but never both. The punk kids and metal kids hung out together, because there weren't enough weird kids to sustain multiple weird music cliques, but we never listened to each other's music. By 1989 every kid who owned more than three black tee shirts had a copy of this album, and no one thought it was weird to skateboard to a mix-tape that had both Dead Kennedys and, like, Nuclear Assault or whatever on it.
Operation Ivy -- Energy
Yeah, yeah, I know, ska-core. This one was good, though. In my early adult years I got through many long shifts at various shitty industrial temp jobs by singing basically this entire album in my head.
The Tear Garden -- Tired Eyes Slowly Burning
A side project by members of Skinny Puppy and The Legendary Pink Dots; imagine an alternate universe where Pink Floyd first formed in 1986 and recorded The Piper at the Gates of Dawn with synthesizers instead of guitars. The standout track is the 16 minute "You and Me and Rainbows", an epic yet at the same time harrowingly ordinary personal tragedy of love, loss, and the hope for redemption under the shadow of addiction.
Sonic Youth -- Sister
If you could convert Philip K. Dick's brain into sound waves, this would be the result.
Subhumans -- The Day the Country Died
A lot of 80s anarcho-punk can be pretty dour stuff, grim accounts of the struggle to survive with your ideals intact beneath the crushing weight of Reagan/Thatcher conformity. The Subhumans never forgot that just because you want to fight the system and smash the state doesn't mean you're not allowed to have a good time.
Led Zeppelin -- Led Zeppelin II
Anyone from Seattle who's never fucked to a Led Zeppelin album is secretly from Portland.
Hardfloor -- TB Resuscitation
This is less "listening to an album" and more "plugging a meditation chip into your cranial jack to defrag your brain."
Dead Kennedys -- Plastic Surgery Disasters
Their earlier stuff was good but inconsistent, and too much of their later work was just the band noodling for ten minutes behind Jello's meandering rants, but this album was laser focused: tightly crafted, insightful lyrics and top-notch musicianship with just the right blend of energy and variety.
Hammerbox -- Hammerbox
Name any Seattle grunge band in existence in 1990 and I probably saw Hammerbox open for them at least once, probably in a shitty little venue where we all looked at each other like, "What the fuck? These guys are way too good to be playing here!" before jumping in the pit and moshing our fool heads off. In a better world, this band would have been huge. I just think that the combination of powerful yet melodic female vocals and musicians who could actually play their instruments very well fell too far outside the narrow definition of "grunge" that the major labels decided to package up and sell to the rest of the world.
(My brush with stardom: the guitar player for Hammerbox once asked me to fetch a roll of duct tape for them while they were setting up for a show at the OK Hotel.)
Black Sabbath -- Paranoid
Crushing riffs, pounding drums, lyrics about war and the devil. Pretty standard stuff, right? Except this was nineteen fucking seventy and everyone else was still strumming acoustic guitars and singing about flowers and unicorns and shit.
U2 -- October
All throughout high school, whenever I first met a girl I liked, I'd end up going for a bike ride with October in my Walkman. I never planned it that way, it was never "Oh, hey, I like a girl, time to go listen to U2 on a bicycle," but it was still an inevitable part of the process. Coasting slightly too fast down a hill to the opening piano part from "I Fall Down"? Yup, that's exactly what a new crush feels like.
Sinéad O'Connor -- The Lion and the Cobra
I once called the local college radio station and scolded the DJ for pronouncing "Sinéad" wrong. That's the kind of shit we did back when there was no internet.
<-- Entry / Current Comment
arrowhen said @ 12:37am GMT on 10th September [Score:1 laz0r]
15 is a tricky number. It's easy to come up with a top five, but when you go further than that it's hard to narrow it down from, like, a top 200. In no particular order...
"Weird Al" Yankovic -- In 3D
This was the very first album I ever bought. The first of many. Shortly thereafter was my first ever argument with some moron about how my favorite artist was an underrated genius and their musical tastes were stupid and wrong. The first of many.
Joy Division -- The Peel Sessions
I like everything Joy Division ever did, but this is them at their best. Unencumbered by Martin Hannett's wanky, cocaine-addled overproduction and the sloppiness and technical difficulties that often marred their live performances, this is like being a fly on the wall at a really good rehearsal session.
The Cure -- Pornography
The absolute pinnacle of depressing 80s music, this album will make you miserable if you're happy or happy if you're miserable. The albums before this were good, and even during their pathetic 30 year descent into fat old jam band territory afterwards they put out a couple of good numbers, but for me this is the album that will always be synonymous with The Cure.
The Accüsed -- Martha Splatterhead's Maddest Stories Ever Told
I was in high school when this album came out in 1988. At my school, you might like punk or metal, but never both. The punk kids and metal kids hung out together, because there weren't enough weird kids to sustain multiple weird music cliques, but we never listened to each other's music. By 1989 every kid who owned more than three black tee shirts had a copy of this album, and no one thought it was weird to skateboard to a mix-tape that had both Dead Kennedys and, like, Nuclear Assault or whatever on it.
Operation Ivy -- Energy
Yeah, yeah, I know, ska-core. This one was good, though. In my early adult years I got through many long shifts at various shitty industrial temp jobs by singing basically this entire album in my head.
The Tear Garden -- Tired Eyes Slowly Burning
A side project by members of Skinny Puppy and The Legendary Pink Dots; imagine an alternate universe where Pink Floyd first formed in 1986 and recorded The Piper at the Gates of Dawn with synthesizers instead of guitars. The standout track is the 16 minute "You and Me and Rainbows", an epic yet at the same time harrowingly ordinary personal tragedy of love, loss, and the hope for redemption under the shadow of addiction.
Sonic Youth -- Sister
If you could convert Philip K. Dick's brain into sound waves, this would be the result.
Subhumans -- The Day the Country Died
A lot of 80s anarcho-punk can be pretty dour stuff, grim accounts of the struggle to survive with your ideals intact beneath the crushing weight of Reagan/Thatcher conformity. The Subhumans never forgot that just because you want to fight the system and smash the state doesn't mean you're not allowed to have a good time.
Led Zeppelin -- Led Zeppelin II
Anyone from Seattle who's never fucked to a Led Zeppelin album is secretly from Portland.
Hardfloor -- TB Resuscitation
This is less "listening to an album" and more "plugging a meditation chip into your cranial jack to defrag your brain."
Dead Kennedys -- Plastic Surgery Disasters
Their earlier stuff was good but inconsistent, and too much of their later work was just the band noodling for ten minutes behind Jello's meandering rants, but this album was laser focused: tightly crafted, insightful lyrics and top-notch musicianship with just the right blend of energy and variety.
Hammerbox -- Hammerbox
Name any Seattle grunge band in existence in 1990 and I probably saw Hammerbox open for them at least once, probably in a shitty little venue where we all looked at each other like, "What the fuck? These guys are way too good to be playing here!" before jumping in the pit and moshing our fool heads off. In a better world, this band would have been huge. I just think that the combination of powerful yet melodic female vocals and musicians who could actually play their instruments very well fell too far outside the narrow definition of "grunge" that the major labels decided to package up and sell to the rest of the world.
(My brush with stardom: the guitar player for Hammerbox once asked me to fetch a roll of duct tape for them while they were setting up for a show at the OK Hotel.)
Black Sabbath -- Paranoid
Crushing riffs, pounding drums, lyrics about war and the devil. Pretty standard stuff, right? Except this was nineteen fucking seventy and everyone else was still strumming acoustic guitars and singing about flowers and unicorns and shit.
U2 -- October
All throughout high school, whenever I first met a girl I liked, I'd end up going for a bike ride with October in my Walkman. I never planned it that way, it was never "Oh, hey, I like a girl, time to go listen to U2 on a bicycle," but it was still an inevitable part of the process. Coasting slightly too fast down a hill to the opening piano part from "I Fall Down"? Yup, that's exactly what a new crush feels like.
Sinéad O'Connor -- The Lion and the Cobra
I once called the local college radio station and scolded the DJ for pronouncing "Sinéad" wrong. That's the kind of shit we did back when there was no internet.
