15 Albums That Changed Your Life

Thishas been making its rounds on FB, but I think MOGgers would tend to do it justice with good stories behind the lists.

Think of 15 albums that had such a profound effect on you they changed your life or the way you looked at it. They sucked you in and took you over for days, weeks, months, years. These are the albums that you can use to identify time, places, people, emotions. These are the albums that no matter what they were thought of musically shaped your world.

These are in order of when I first heard them.

01 Captain Beefheart & the Magic Band - Trout Mask Replica 1969
My uncle left it at my grandparent's house when he moved out while I was a baby, and I first heard it when I was three. Along with The White Album and The Fugs, it was obviously children's music. I liked the sound of the words, "A squid eating dough in a polyethylene bag, is fast 'n' bulbous, got me?" It festered in my subconscience until years later when I learned it was "avant-garde," and that art could (should?) be fun and whimsical. When a friend sold me his copy of his following album, Lick My Decals Off, Baby in college, my obsession was renewed, and Beefheart became a sort of muse for my evolving radio show, Bucket O' Nasties, and later my website.

02 Curtis Mayfield - Superfly 1972
Soul and funk wasn't exactly plentiful in Iowa in the 70s, but my mother saw the movie and got the soundtrack. This planted a seed in me. In kinder/first grade, we had an early karaoke-like tradition where we could bring records in to play and sing along to. One day I brought Superfly and put on the cut, "Pusherman," a favorite for its nursery-rhyme style lyrics. I didn't understand why the teacher leapt to the record player to stop it, just as I was finishing the second verse, "Secret stash, heavy bread/Baddest bitches in the bed." I didn't know what the words meant of course, but Mayfield was a gateway to so much more music I loved, from the Impressions, Aretha, Otis and all other 60s soul, and James Brown, Al Green, Sly Stone, Funkadelic and later hip-hop.

03 Electric Light Orchestra - Out of the Blue 1977
As an nine year-old, they were the first band I became a huge fanatic of and scrounged for money to buy all their records like a crack addict, followed shortly by Queen and, er, Styx. It was also the album that initiated the first common bond (aside from fart contests and prank phone calls) with my friend Mike, the only one I'm still friends with from that age.

04 Talking Heads - Fear Of Music 1979
The paranoia and dread frightened me when I was ten, but later it made a lot of sense in the tail end of the cold war. It eventually became one of my favorites among post-punk albums years later, alongside Joy Division, Gang Of Four, Birthday Party, etc.

05 Iron Maiden - Piece Of Mind 1983
This was the album to totally win me over to metal. Ever since I've been a sucker for twin lead guitars, from Judas Priest, Thin Lizzy and Lord Weird Slough Feg to Television, Wishbone Ash and the Allman Brothers, about as close as I'll ever get to hippie jam music.

06 Violent Femmes 1983
Learned that some 20-somethings either never outgrew their 14 year-old pubescent sexual frustration and angst, or that perhaps they made it for us. And also that Jonathan Richman & the Modern Lovers felt the same things a decade before.

07 U2 - War 1983
Coinciding with my growing interest in politics, I learned that angry arena rock might not change anything, but can provide an encouraging soundtrack. I read Creem magazine that U2 toured with the likes of Joy Division, Comsat Angels, The Sound and Echo & the Bunnymen, who I was just starting to hear on college radio station KFAI, and learn about in the first Trouser Press Record Guide.

08 Hüsker Dü - Zen Arcade 1984
There was a lot of music in the mid-eighties perfectly suited for teenage angst with The Smiths, New Order, The Cure, and The Replacements. But what really best represented the frayed edges of hormonal torture was a mix tape I dubbed from a friend's older brother that included The Butthole Surfers, Big Black, Naked Raygun and Hüsker Dü. By the time I started college they were my favorite band. My first week there they were playing at First Avenue, but I didn't go because I was persuaded by a group of people to see a free outdoor concert by cheesy reggae band Ipso Facto. Like a dumbass, I figured I'd have plenty of chances to see them. The band broke up the next week, and is about the only one that hasn't reunited for a tour 20 years later.

09 The Stooges - Fun House 1970
Just after I discovered Dinosaur Jr. and decided they were the heaviest band around, I finally got around to hearing the greatest rock 'n' roll album ever recorded. Nothing could match the feral, unhinged intensity of The Stooges.

10 The Feelies - Crazy Rhythms 1980
I loved The Velvet Underground and Lou Reed as much as anyone, but it was The Feelies who I related to more, juicing up VU's repetition with nervous teenage energy, incorporating influences from Brian Eno and Krautrock, which I would soon dig into.

11 Billie Holiday - Lady Day: Best Of 1935-1944
The first music introduced to me by a girlfriend, appropriately enough. It was the first time I really appreciated a vocal performance and its emotional and sensual nuances.

12 The Pixies - Surfer Rosa 1988
The first 21+ show I snuck into with a borrowed ID at 7th St. Entry, before their album was released. They were like whirling dervishes, totally original. Mind blown. Probably my first show at First Avenue in Mpls (7th St is the attached baby venue) was Sonic Youth later that year. After a year consuming Bad Moon Rising, Evol and Sister, I was really excited about this Daydram Nation. The album release and concert truly felt like an event. Mind blown x infinity.

13 Charles Mingus - The Black Saint And The Sinner Lady 1963
I've enjoyed a fair amount of jazz up to that point by John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, etc. This was the first album where I felt overwhelmed, by a jazz album. Mingus has a seething passion that verges on insane, which is probably why he used to pull a gun on his band. There's no lyrics, but I can hear the storyline.

14 Toots & The Maytals - Funky Kingston 1973
My exposure to reggae was typical in college, limited mainly to Bob Marley's Legend, some Peter Tosh, Burning Spear, Alpha Blondy and a local band. It's hard no to associate it with hacky sack tossin' scandifarians, but Toots & The Maytals broke that spell with such joyous music that taps directly into the spirit of Otis Redding. After that I discovered hundreds of albums, some of which surpassed the best of Marley's even.

15 Tricky - Maxinquaye 1995
Fifteen albums are probably enough for a lot of people, but I could easily do 50 if I had the time. I once dated a neuroscientist who talked about the correlation between age and brain processes related to emotional experience. Basically most people experience and feel things more intensely between the ages of about 15 and 24. So it makes sense that music is more likely to influence or change your life during that period. That's sadly true for myself too. I haven't really slowed down in listening to new music, but I'm not quite as excited about it as I used to be. I was 25 when this album came out, and that year seemed so exciting and ripe with possibilities, both musically and personally. If a scratchy-frog voiced British rapper could mix dub, soul, hip-hop and pop into something seamlessly sexy, it seemed anything was possible.