Face the MUSIC!!!

  It's not really that much of a stretch to say that Ali Farka Toure completely changed my musical life and direction.  It all kind of started in the mid 90's, more or less a continuation of what I wrote about within the Bill Frisell "Good Dog, Happy Man" entry.  Around this time, after venturing into guitar based jazz and other areas, another storm was brewing internally for me:  world music. I would say that this pretty much started with my minor interest in Kitaro, someone who straddled the line between New Age and World in general.  When you're really into music, one artist tends to forge a path to another, and then another, and the next thing you know you're at a doorstep that you would have never imagined.  Another album that helped get me to that doorway was Peter Gabriel's "Passion" instrumental album from the late 80's, not to mention most of Gabriel's work since his third solo release.  Gabriel put an incredible amount of effort...

  I knew I wouldn't get too terribly far into this list without bringing up Bill Frisell.  To say that Bill Frisell changed my musical life is pretty much an understatement.  Back in the early 90's, I did actually  listen to some instrumental music/light jazz and/or New Age, as it was called back then, but I honestly didn't take it that seriously at the time.  Next to the rock music that I heavily listened to, the instrumental albums seemed a bit flimsy, old fogey-ish, and something not terribly sustainable for a listener.  Yes, that was my old self talking.  I tended to use instrumental music much more as a background or music simply to veg and relax to. And then, I met someone at work that changed my musical life.  It was I believe the very first time I met this man that he mentioned "...I think you'd like Bill Frisell...ever heard of him?"  My answer was "Bill who?!".  Now, I guess my statement above about instrumental music isn't all...

  Perhaps no album in my collection stands as important to me personally as Big Country's first album "The Crossing".  I still remember when I purchased this album in early 1984, when I was still pretty young, and I somehow had managed to save up enough dollars (probably a quarter at a time) to buy this on cassette from a catalog company store along the lines of a Service Merchandise.  Back in those days, coming up with $6 - $7 was serious business for a 12 or 13 year old with no allowance, and so it took days and weeks of thought and pondering before making a final decision to move forward with an album purchase, or what I considered an "investment" in a band.  And then, there was the finagling of my parents to somehow get them to drive me to a location that would have the album in stock.  I actually got fairly smart; I learned what each store had in stock beforehand, especially places that my parents would go to more often, and then act like I needed, say, som...

  I can think of no better album that's literally wonderfully crafted pure pop than Joe Jackson's "Laughter and Lust".  This album is truly famous in my catalog, one that I feel hardly anyone knows about and/or has ever heard.  It plays from start to finish almost like a greatest hits album, where each and every song is so pop/radio friendly that it's hard to even guess at which track was chosen as the single.  Ironically, the first single was the opening "Obvious Song", and that's probably my least favorite song on the album...but that's not saying much since it's also a fantastic track, and that's just how high the bar is set here. I actually got my hands on this album via the old Columbia House "get 10 CD's for a $1" routine that was very popular in the 80's/90's.  I tended to use this "discount", if you will, as a way for me to try out music that I might otherwise not go out and purchase.  It was someti...

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 ...