Face the MUSIC!!!

For anyone that knows me even remotely on a musical level, it's well known that I'm a massive fan of all things Wire.  In thinking about that, it occurred to me that the band Wire is probably the most difficult band in my collection to ever really discuss.  For example, if you asked 10 major Wire fans about their favorite Wire album, I think you'd get close to 10 different answers.  The band just covers so many facets and sounds simply under their own band name ("Wire" and "Wir"), but then if you include all the sub projects and solo work, the possibilities are endless.  Plus, I think early/original Wire fans probably hate 80's Wire fans, and neither probably like 2000's Wire fans, so there's definitely a division in the fan universe. For example, the beginning part of Wire consists of straight up guitar punk.  This is what put them on the map initially, mind you their work has unusual lyrics and they started to dabble into sometimes bizarre ...

  It's no secret that I absolutely love Brendan Perry's work.  In fact, while Lisa Gerrard usually gets most of the attention with the later part of Dead Can Dance's work, I personally always marveled at Perry's contributions and they tend to be my favorite.  "Eye of the Hunter", what I believe is his first "real" solo album, is in short a complete masterpiece for anyone who enjoys very mellow mood music. The story of this album for me is that a very good friend of a friend purchased this album for another friend of mine at the time, or so I believe that's how it came about.  This particular friend was much more into dance and uppity music, and one day at lunch he popped this into his vehicle's CD player.  At the time, I really wasn't a fan of DCD except for the live video of which I had watched a couple of times.  I recall that when he put this album on, it was like time stopped, meaning the music was so incredibly slow and mellow that i...

For anyone who knows me musically, it's common knowledge that I frequently call Talk Talk's sublime 1988 release "Spirit of Eden" as one of the greatest musical masterpieces ever made for moody, ambient music.  The crazy part is how the band Talk Talk, who started out sounding more like early Duran Duran and was labeled as "synth pop", somehow got to this sound and album, and all within only 4 albums spanning about 6 years.  They are now widely regarded as originating the musical movement later known as "post rock", a genre which really didn't take off for another decade by bands such as Sigur Ros, Godspeed You Black Emperor, and so on. Oddly, I actually purchased "Spirit of Eden" on a whim at Zia Records back in late '88 for a whopping $2.99, used on vinyl, with having not owned nor heard any other Talk Talk albums nor really being a fan.  I remember putting in on one day and really liking it, although it completely blew my mind ...

Well, you may or may not be shocked that this was the next album I chose to tackle.  Now, keep in mind, this is not a "best album by..." blog by any means but more or less a list of albums that really bowled me over at some point in my life.  Most people would probably think that I'd opt for "Dark Side of the Moon" or maybe "The Wall", and in all fairness both of those will probably end up here at some point, but "Meddle" is the album that really knocked me out when I first heard it AND made me a Pink Floyd fan. The irony is that, until my sister made me go to a midnight showing of "The Wall", I actually thought Pink Floyd was a heavy metal band and didn't really give them the time of day.  I recall sitting in a class during freshman year of high school by some seniors who were diehard music fans, and I was telling them that I didn't listen to Floyd because I didn't like heavy metal.  I still remember the odd look that o...

  As promised, I wanted to immediately shift out of the 80's rock music and into something completely different.  Ah, yes, Yat-Kha...  In short, they changed my life in more ways that one, and this album in particular, oddly a cover song album, something I would pretty much never ever in a million years ever call someone's "best" album, is actually my personal favorite of this band's, and if you actually listen to a few minutes of it, I think you'll understand why. "Re-Covers" is literally a dream album for anyone that grew up on rock but wants to hear these songs reinterpreted in a manner that is actually beyond your mind's comprehension.  Once you pick up your jaw from the floor after hearing what these versions sound like, these are also some of the most fun songs you'll ever hear from within the world music genre. First off, I found Yat-Kha fairly early on when I started my world music deep dive back in the late 90's/early 2000's....

Wow...where do I even start with this one?  I can easily say that this album changed my life, in fact Wall of Voodoo/Stan Ridgway in general changed my life altogether, but I also remained a fan of Voodoo during the Prieboy era and so the influence just stretches all over the place. The very first album I picked up in the whole category was Stan Ridgway's "The Big Heat", one that will absolutely end up on this list eventually, and then for some reason I believe I purchased WOV's "Seven Days in Sammystown" next.  I know...seems like a strange transition, no?  Part of it was that I was so puzzled by the back picture on that album (record), knowing that Ridgway was gone and that the band had apparently taken a bit of a turn.  Back in those days, there were very few ways of actually hearing what an album sounded like without actually buying it.  Now, this probably sounds insane to younger people today but, if the music wasn't played on the radio, you'd e...

I always thought that the first entry in this blog would be Wall of Voodoo's "Call of the West"; in fact, I even swore that it would be about 2 decades ago.  Strangely, Stump's "A Fierce Pancake" has overtaken that slot and WOV has moved to slot number 2. Now, don't be confused...  I know I said these are in no particular order, and for the most part that is true, but I WILL say that the two most prominent albums in my life have always been this one and WOV's "Call of the West". But, why the change then?  I think it's simply that "A Fierce Pancake" has just SO much to chew on that I simply never ever get bored of it and listen and reference it constantly.  In fact, I can honestly say that various lines from this album are said aloud by me each and every day...no joke.  This album has had such a huge influence on my life in general that it falls into that category of "...I can't imagine my life without it...". The...

"Face the MUSIC!!!" lives on!  This was a title I used to use way back when, back in the day when I would forcibly send emails out to people I worked with (with no "unsubscribe" option, that is), sharing music news and such.  Well, these days, I'm thankfully not doing that...I mean, it was the beginning of regular email communication, after all, and I admittedly didn't understand boundaries (yeah, I know...what can I say?). Today, this blog is a place for me to list the endless number of albums that I've loved, adored, couldn't live without, have influenced me, greatly altered my life, changed my own personal writing, and so on.  It's sort of like the old Tower Records Desert Island Discs (DID) list except that was limited to only 10 choices, and I have a feeling mine will be very numerous. It should be noted that these entries are not in any particular order.  Instead, it's more or less in the order I remember to write about them, so please ...