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.