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The Beatles – Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
Before I was a fully formed individual with my own music tastes, I loved the Beatles. It seems less obvious now, because my taste in music has expanded in many different directions, and the Beatles are just about the oldest music I still listen to with any regularity. But I’m old, and when I was…
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The Most Influential Albums of My Life
In 2018, a “challenge” went around Facebook that I was able to get behind and participate in – the first (and only) one ever. No Ice Bucket Challenges for me, but the 10 Most Influential Albums in 10 Days challenge was appealing. My college friend Leigh forwarded me the challenge, which had been almost universally…
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Bob Dylan – Highway 61 Revisited
(Album ©1965, Columbia Records) This is (IMO) one of the two most important albums of all time (along with Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band), containing songs that brought a depth to rock-n-roll. (Read Greil Marcus’ Like A Rolling Stone to learn more about the impact of this album.) The cover image was a photo taken…
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Ryan Adams – Gold
(Album ©2001, Lost Highway Records) The next album on my musical journey is Ryan Adams’ 2001 masterpiece, Gold. It came out just two weeks after 9/11, accompanied by the video for the first single, “New York, New York.” The video, as it notes at the start, was filmed on September 7, 2001, and large parts…
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Shawn Colvin – Steady On
(Album ©1989, Columbia Records) As mentioned previously, college was a time of lots of musical discovery for me, as I would assume it is for most people. Lots of new people from different parts of the country with different influences and backgrounds, and lots of local music scenes, to share. Having my roommate, Steve, was…
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Fishbone – Truth And Soul
The first 7 most influential albums have all been ones that are now considered “classic rock,” but as I mentioned previously, college was where I started broadening my tastes and opening myself up to different genres and less mainstream bands. My roommate for three of the four years at UVM, Steve, was a big part…
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Guns-N-Roses – Appetite For Destruction
So far, if you’re following along, we’ve gotten through high school. Van Halen joined Bruce, The Stones, The Kinks, and The Who as my favorite bands – all of whom I got to see live at least once. 102.7 WNEW-FM was my station, playing the ’60’s – ’80’s rock-n-roll before it was labeled “classic rock.”…
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Van Halen – Van Halen
Bruce, The Kinks, The Stones and The Who got me through Middle School, but by 1983, I knew there was other exciting music out there. I had already picked up on snippets of harder rock, from Rush (“Tom Sawyer”) and the aforementioned Kiss to Queen and AC/DC (“Back in Black,” “For Those About To Rock”)…
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The Kinks – Give The People What They Want
I used to spend a lot of time with my aunt Deane & uncle Howie – we’ve been really tight since I was a little kid. So spending a weekend afternoon with them in NYC was a semi-regular event. One Saturday in early 1982, I was at their apartment on the Upper West Side. We…
