Author: nfreim

“Truth is Often Bitter – Left Unsaid”

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And this is part three of the “12 albums that left a lasting impression” ramble. Context is everything. I remember someone telling me, when I was preparing to drive over to Nevada after my stepdad died, “be careful about which music you listen to because you don’t want to always associate it with this.”

 

That’s a good point in some ways. (Though I don’t actually recall much of anything about the drive – too much shock and sadness – and could not tell you what I had playing.) Certain music can get so tied to a particular person or time or feeling that we can’t listen to it later. The emotions seem to be stuffed into the notes and come pouring over us whether we want them to or not.

 

However, that can also just happen with any song. I recall once bursting into tears upon a hearing of “I Will Survive.” When I think of that song, I think of the jail dance scene in The Replacements. So why did that particular time make me cry? Well, it was a tough time for me on a personal level, and something about it just hit me. I didn’t want to be crying in the middle of Southern California late afternoon traffic, but music can do that. Music is like poetry – distilled emotion.

 

The last four.

 

Pink Floyd – The Wall

I knew the chorus to “Another Brick in the Wall Part 2” – I think every school child in the early 80s knew that. In eighth grade, my friends and I would sing it at recess; we thought we were so cool – and we were so wrong. Then in high school, my boyfriend (yes, the same one who gave me the Journey album) showed me the movie and got me a copy of the soundtrack. “Goodbye Blue Sky” – “Run Like Hell” – “Hey You” – such amazing songs. Angsty, yes. But amazing. Maybe I thought it was perfect because I was in the middle of being an angst-ridden teenager filling notebooks with poetry that used far too many clichéd images. Haven’t we all been there, though? And that’s the point.

 

“Hey you – out there in the cold – getting lonely, getting old – can you feel me?”

 

 

Rush – Grace Under Pressure

This one, too, can be laid at the feet of my high school boyfriend. (Wonder whatever happened to Dave? After writing all this, I’m sort of feeling that I should find him and thank him for the music.) Rush was his favorite band; Tolkien was his favorite writer. The album Fly By Night has a song called “Rivendell” on it. Dave recorded that one for me (on the other side of Dream After Dream, as I recall). I liked some of it, enough to ask for more albums by Rush. He gave me Grace Under Pressure next, and that one hooked me. “Kid Gloves” – “The Body Electric” – “Distant Early Warning” – so much good music! And Peart’s writing has just gotten better over the years. Rush is one of my two favorite groups that I cannot be without. (Yes, if you read the other post, Indigo Girls is the other one. Yes, I have a little blue shuffle I call Speedy Blue that has nothing on it but the catalog of Indigo Girls and Rush. Yes, the combo makes perfect sense to me. But that is an explanation for another time.)

 

“Overwhelmed by everything – but wanting more so much”

 

 

The Smothers Brothers – The Two Sides of the Smothers Brothers

This makes me think of my grandparents. My sister and I would play the Smothers Brothers records over and over when we went to visit my grandparents. My grandfather especially loved the humor in many of these. He was a big fan of puns and wordplay. (I have a little wooden lean-to with thumbtacks inside that he made. It’s a tacks shelter – yes, he’s partly to blame for my mother’s and by extension my sense of humor.) This album is one of my favorites because not only does it have great comedy (“Laredo,” “Cabbage,” “Map of the World” – although, sadly, not my ultimate favorite “Crabs Walk Sideways”), it also has some beautiful songs. They sound wonderful together. And one of my best friends even took me to see them when we lived in Las Vegas. I still play their music and indoctrinate others.

 

“There were these vicious beasts in these deep crevasses – and they sure looked like pumas”

 

 

Vivaldi – The Four Seasons

I first heard this music as the soundtrack for the 1981 film of the same name. I guess that says something about my taste since I was a pre-teen and I still really got into the drama of the film. Sure, it’s got a lot of funny bits, but it always struck me more as a reflective movie rather than a comedy. And my mom loves the film, too, so it makes me think of her. But the music was my introduction to the classical genre. Vivaldi and other composers have become a staple in my musical rotation; I concentrate best with instrumental music (so I’m not distracted by singing along). While my library now includes a decent amount of classical works, Four Seasons always has a special place in my heart.

 

Just twelve required on the list – and there are the twelve. I feel like I could go on about various songs and albums and all the memories they evoke, but maybe I’d best save some of that material for a future date.

 

 

 

**Incidentally, these were also on my first short list. But the whys and wherefores are for another time.

 

ABBA – Greatest Hits Vol. 2

B-52s – Whammy!

Bay City Rollers — Greatest Hits,

Melissa Etheridge – Brave and Crazy

Huey Lewis and the News – Four Chords and Several Years Ago

Robert Johnson – The Complete Recordings

Les Miserables – London Cast Recording

The Replacements – Don’t Tell a Soul

Yaz — Upstairs at Eric’s

“I Burn Up In Your Presence”

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Welcome to part two of the “12 albums that left a lasting impression” ramble. As I said, I can’t help but want to give context for my list of albums. There’s a vast amount of good music in the world (happy face here), but context is often what makes it so memorable on a personal level.

 

Like many people, I can recall very specific events and feelings associated with certain songs. Some of it is just odd. Not sure why I can still remember all the lyrics to songs I haven’t heard in years – like “Copacabana” – but I do. Lots of random lyrics rattling around in there – why am I retaining Air Supply lyrics? Why do I remember having Shaun Cassidy’s second album on eight track? Will I ever know all the words to “It’s the End of the World As We Know It”?

 

Who knows?

 

Next four on the list.

 

Bela Fleck and the Flecktones – UFO Tofu

My dad had a collection of Chuck (and Gap) Mangione albums, and while they were okay, I never felt very interested in jazz. But then in undergrad, my boyfriend took me to see Bela Fleck in concert. Wow. Kind of blew my mind in the “jazz can sound like this?” department. Although I guess some people call the band’s music bluegrass or folk rather than jazz, it served as an entry for me into a whole new category of music. I’m still learning about jazz – there are so many styles! – but I enjoy the fact that more than twenty years later, there’s still more to explore. Bonus points: the title is a palindrome, which delights my writerly self.

 

Indigo Girls – Rites of Passage

I heard this in undergrad (from the same guy as above, in fact). We had just discovered that I liked him and he liked me as more than friends and so now what do we do about it? Do we go ahead and risk the friendship to see if the “something more” works out? I was over at his place for dinner – sort of but not quite a first date – and he played “Ghost” for me; he said it had made him think of me when he heard it. I took the cd home that night and listened to it all. I fell in love with their voices and music. Amy Ray’s cover of “Romeo and Juliet” still gets a lot of play in my mixes, as does “Ghost” (today’s title is a line from that song). Near flawless album (not a huge fan of “Let It Be Me”) and they are still one of my two favorite groups.

 

Journey – Dream After Dream

My high school boyfriend recorded this for me (with a Rush album on the flip side, but I’ll get to that later). Like scads of 80’s teens, I imagine, “Faithfully” was “our” song. Since he knew I liked Journey, he thought I might like this album. It was a soundtrack for a Japanese film, and most of it is instrumental music. Big shock for me, considering that my experience with Journey was all top 40 hits. This album made me realize that any group/artist could make music that would surprise me. I just have to be willing to give it a listen.

 

Loreena McKennitt – The Visit

Beautiful voice, love what she does with poetry. Her version of “The Highwayman” is my favorite, but this is the first album of hers that I heard. One of my majors in school (yes, I did two bachelor degrees at the same time – the title of the blog should clue you in to my scholarly nerdliness) was English. I had a professor for Victorian literature who was a riot. To this day, I can’t teach “Dover Beach” without thinking about his story of using it to try to seduce a girl – it was working, he said – and trying to finish the last lines quickly before she really listened to what they were saying (which is decidedly unromantic – more like you’re my “mournful cosmic last resort” to quote Anthony Hecht’s “The Dover Bitch”). When we were reading Tennyson, the prof played McKennitt’s recording of “The Lady of Shalott” for us. Most of the class was bored (to be fair, it is more than ten minutes long), but I was entranced. After class, I asked to borrow the tape so I could copy it.

 

And on that note of admitting to a history of pirating music (but really, who didn’t record albums on cassette tapes and pass them around? you couldn’t play a record in your car), perhaps I should wrap up for the night.

“I Used to Dance Around the Living Room”

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One of the drawbacks of being a writer is that there is never enough time to write everything I want to write. I’ve been away from this blog for a long time, working on other projects that had deadlines and doing that whole “earn my keep by working” thing.

 

I’ve been wanting to return here, though, and I found a bit of inspiration. So here I am again.

 

A friend on facebook posted one of those “answer this and tag friends to answer” things. I don’t often do those; mainly because some of them include very personal information that I don’t feel like broadcasting to all and sundry. But this one caught my attention.

 

“List 12 albums – no more than one per artist/group – that left a lasting impression on you.”

 

Now that’s a pretty wide field. Do I pick according to how memorable I feel the music is? According to the personal significance of the time period or person who introduced me to the music? What exactly constitutes a “lasting impression”? Do I still have to remember most of the words?

 

Of course the post said “don’t take too long and don’t think too hard” – but that’s a tall order for someone who a) takes music pretty seriously and b) rambles on at the drop of a hat when asked about her favorite things. Indeed, I find I can’t go a day without music. And my taste is fairly wide ranging. An example, you say? Okay, the playlist going now just went from Paul McCartney to Nine Inch Nails to Sarah McLachlan. Running through the list of my Pandora stations would probably make most people scratch their heads.

 

At any rate, before I digress into a lengthy discussion of the bizarre cornucopia that is my music library, let’s get back to the question at hand.

 

I made a short list in speedy order, but that short list was about twenty. So in cutting them down, I tried to focus on the significance of the music (do I still listen?) combined with the personal significance surrounding the album (who shared it or when did I hear it?).

 

Oh, they’re in alphabetical order, not order of importance, because – well, I’m a book nerd and like things organized.

 

A Chorus Line – Original Cast Recording

My parents liked musicals, and at a young age I was already in love with movie musicals like Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. A Chorus Line was the first musical I remember seeing in a theatre; I must have been nine or ten. We had the album at home, and after seeing the show, I memorized all the lyrics and used to make up dance numbers, just like the song says. (In the basement, though, not really the living room.)

 

Depeche Mode – Violator

This was during my undergrad years. I’m not sure if they’re considered alternative rock or progressive rock. But it was a new kind of music for me. I suppose I felt like I was getting to explore new avenues as part of becoming an “adult.” But it represents a branch in my musical tree: learning to give anything a try. I fell in love with a couple of the songs. I love “Halo.” “Personal Jesus” is a fantastic dance song. And I still think “Blue Dress” is an incredibly sexy song. (Not just because I look good in blue, but that doesn’t hurt.)

 

Neil Diamond – 12 Greatest Hits

Neil Diamond is one of my mother’s favorite musicians; we had at least a dozen of his albums. I think I love this one partly because she loves it, and learning all the songs let me sing along with her on road trips. But there are also some classic songs on here. Who can’t rock out to “Sweet Caroline” or “Brother Love’s Traveling Salvation Show”?

 

Dropkick Murphys – Sing Loud, Sing Proud!

My friend Rafe suggested a comic for me to read, Baker Street. (It’s great, but I shall endeavor to stay focused on the topic at hand.) The story is very steeped in punk subculture, a music genre I know little about. The easiest way to start was to set up a Pandora station for punk music and dabble. To my surprise, I found that I really like Celtic punk. And this came at a time when I was going through some personal upheaval, and I was actually in a space by myself again. Subtext: I could listen to whatever I wanted, as loudly as I wanted, and no one was around to complain. Maybe that’s part of why I could get into it.

 

In the interest of getting my dogs fed and having my herbed focaccia while still warm, I will leave the rest for another post.