Identify the 43 albums I couldn't do without

The Best recording of the best opera ever written. I don’t know a lot about opera really, so maybe that’s not fair for me to say, but I know I’m not the first to say it and this is one of my favorite things in the world… The music is so passionate, ferocious, romantic. Never dull or boring, there is so much life in this music and recording… The singers are all incredible. I have seen various productions of this opera on DVDs and have even seen a college opera production of it, so I kind of understand the story (I will never watch with subtitles, I feel like it’s a distraction from tapping into the emotion) – but the music is really what it’s about. Mozart was a genius and the way the singers use their voices as instruments – the way the parts are written to be that way, just blows my mind. The performers aren’t just singing it though, they are acting it… The tempos and orchestra all played with such fire and gusto… much faster than any other recording/production I have seen, and I guess this is where most of the criticism against the recording comes from… but this is the recording that pulled me in to it… Kenneth Tarver’s “Dalla Sua Pace” melts me down… Anytime Olga Pasichnyk or Alexandrina Pendatchanska open their mouths it’s amazing fire and passion… I really don’t know many words that can describe this kind of stuff… but this is definitely an album I could not live without.

This is an amazing compilation of Terry Reid’s work… If you are unfamiliar with him, that’s a shame… He turned down opportunities to front Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple to do his own thing, but unfortunately he never got the success he deserved… Aretha Franklin once said, “There are only three things happening in London: The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, and Terry Reid.” Every track on this is truly great. His voice is so bluesy and soulful… I jam to this all the time… Great rock stuff…

Favorite Tracks:
His cover of “Bang Bang, My Baby Shot Me Down” is unbelievable, everyone loves it… and “Stay With Me Baby” rips my heart out.

Hearing this compilation of Candi’s early music was a defining moment of my musical tastes being forever changed. This opened my ears up to a whole world of soul for me. Along the lines of classic Aretha, but a little bit hipper… Her voice is awesome and the music is hot. Not a bad track on the album (and there are 26)... Great for dancing, driving, making love, feeling blue/sexy/soulful… This is an album that has been all over my life…

Oh, and forget what you know about “Young Hearts Run Free” this is nothing like that. (Encountered many people who say, Oh I love Candi, then start singing disco to me…)

Johnny Cash’s “At San Quentin”

What was it about Johnny Cash that made him so effing cool? He was more country than the people who lived down the dirt road from my house, and yet somehow he’s one of the most rock-n-roll bastards that ever lived. He was the best of both worlds, and nothing suits whiskey drinkin’ nights more than his performance at San Quentin State Prison.

Everything about this album is perfect: the music, the prisoners’ reactions, the song choices. Even though Johnny Cash never served any prison time, you get the impression that he really related to what those men were going through. And the prisoners were just freakin’ thrilled to have him there. I think their reactions are my favorite part of the whole thing.

Back in the day when I had long drives to and from school, I’d listen to nothing but Johnny Cash. All his albums are good for the road, but this one was made for it.

Favorite track: San Quentin

Kathleen Edwards, “Asking for Flowers”

What I like about Kathleen Edwards is that there is an “upfront” attitude with the way she expresses things in her songs. In many of the songs on this particular album, for instance, she’s pointing out things things that aren’t quite right (like not getting the right fulfillment out of a relationship or even observing things wrong with society society) and then saying something like “hey, this is dumb, we need to fix this”. There’s this emotional rawness in her directness sometimes like in this one track called “Sure As Shit” where she says “I sure as shit do love you / And I cuss because I mean it / And for that in my heart I am hopeful / And these words that I chose / I was so careful”...

My favorite track from the album is I Make the Dough, You Get the Glory. I’ve gotten complaints as I’ve been told that this seems to be the only song that’s ever playing in my car. This is in fact by far the song I’ve played the most times on my iPod since I’ve had it… I think it’s all the pedal steel that makes the song so catchy. I love the steel guitar, and if I could ever learn to play just one instrument it would be the pedal steel guitar… Anyway, here are some of the lyrics:

If I write down these memories
that I have saved away
Photographs of the years that have passed
inside my little brain

You’re cool and cred like Fogerty
I’m Elvis Presley in the 70’s
You’re Chateauneuf, I’m Yellow Label
You’re the buffet, I’m just the table
I’m a Ford Tempo, you’re a Maserati
You’re The Great One, I’m Marty McSorley
You’re the Concorde, I’m economy
I make the dough, but you get the glory

The Be Good Tanyas, “Blue Horse”

This was in the fall of 2001. I was a subscriber to the Erin McKeown fan newsletter, and I had read that she’d be opening for this band called The Be Good Tanyas for some shows she was doing in Canada. Since I liked Erin I thought I might like them too, so I looked for their CD in Borders and bought it one Friday night.

I was going through something emotional at the time and felt like I needed to get away. I woke up the next day at 5 AM Saturday morning and impulsively started driving up the coast along the Pacific Coast Highway, taking this CD along with me to listen to on the way. This was December 1, 2001. I though maybe I’d go to San Francisco where I’d never been up to at that time. . Well, ultimately I didn’t even make it as far as Monterey. I was tired after 5 hours of driving, and moreover I was confused and didn’t understand what I was doing. I got as far as Big Sur, this place on the central California coast where there are tall trees, windy roads, steep cliffs, small waterfalls, and fog. I just stopped alongside the road and listened, and I never wanted to leave. I felt like at that moment I belonged there, even if it was for just that moment. I often think of this imagery when I listen to The Be Good Tanyas, particularly when I hear the song “The Littlest Birds” with the lyrics, “You pass through places / And places pass through you / But you carry ‘em with you / On the souls of your travellin’ shoes”.

Several months later I was listened to this album while driving late at night on the freeway in LA somewhere with my thoughts wandering, and there was a moment where I was thinking that I finally understood entirely what was meant by the lyrics in the song “Only in the Past”, where they sing, “Run away to the seashore it doesn’t matter anymore / Doesn’t matter anymore / Words dry up and fly away with the passing of the days / Eventually you just let the stone fall ”. It’s about letting dreams and memories die and conceding defeat to the past. I was just thinking while listening to it that it’s too bad that nothing lasts. I can’t remember feeling so disconnected from life and from the world as I did around that time. All I could do was see the end of everything, and the end was never good. Happiness and sadness both seemed fake. If everything ended, it was hard to see the point of existence, and the only thing that seemed real was nothing… Hmmm… This song is supposed to be about moving on from a relationship and accepting that it’s time to move on, and it’s actually pleasant to listen to. Yet, for some reason it inspired me to think of all this other stuff that was swirling around in my mind at the time…

There are so many awesome tracks on this album that I find special meaning in, but if I have to choose a favorite one it’s Light Enough To Travel. It’s about not fitting in but not letting that get to you, or at least that’s what it’s about to me. Here are some of the lyrics:

Promise me we won’t go into the nightclub
I feel so fucked up when I’m in there
Can’t tell the bouncers from the customers
And I don’t know which ones I prefer

Promise me we won’t go into the nightclub
I really think that it’s obscene
What kind of people go to meet people
Someplace they can’t be heard or seen

Aretha Franklin’s “I Never Loved A Man The Way I Love You”

This is one of the albums that I put into heavy rotation in the springtime. Sometimes it feels like there’s nothing better than driving around in cool sunny weather with Aretha on the radio. Just this afternoon I sat in G’s living room with the door open, a breeze blowing in and feeling all right the world for as long as the music lasted. There’s just something about it that makes me undeniably happy.

Favorite track: “I Never Loved A Man (The Way I Love You)”

Pete Yorn, “Music For The Morning After”

This is another one of the albums that featured prominently on the soundtrack of my life in the summer of 2001. Many of my favorite albums I first listened to around this time, and I think most people’s favorite music comes from particularly significant times in their lives. During approximately this period, plus or minus a year, I was in my early 20’s and experienced the most dramatic changes of my life so far, like being newly independent after finishing school and living in the city, the ups and downs of relationship drama, being totally in control of my own life for the first time and the opportunities and indecision that go along with that. Pete Yorn doesn’t really have the most brilliant songwriting, but I think he does an effective job of capturing that kind of restlessness people (at least I speak for myself) experience at that age.

My favorite track on the album is Life On A Chain. This is to this day one of the songs I listen to most often, and yet I’m still not 100% sure what it was intended to mean. To me, it’s about trying to move on but not being sure how to. Here are some of the lyrics:

Time alone is good, I spend my days in the city,
Dirty neighborhood, you know you’ll never convince me,
So I sold the town away, I couldn’t wait to forget you,
I was killed in half a day, I hadn’t time to regret you,
And I was waiting over here for life to begin,
I was looking for the new thing
And you were the sunshine heading my front line,
I was alone, you were just around the corner from me.

k.d. lang, “Absolute Torch and Twang”

This album actually came out when I was in junior high school, but I didn’t really listen to k.d. lang until I was in college. At that time, I was drawn to her for her persona more than anything. I had heard people rave about her voice and her performances and I was vaguely aware of her music, but I just thought her image was really cool. She shamelessly presented herself the way she wanted (androgynous, lesbian, vegan) and had a great deal of success making music that was mostly not easily categorizable into specific genres. I liked how she defied labeling.

So, to satisfy my curiosity I quickly amassed a collection of the albums she had released up to that time, and I was instantly won over as a fan. I thought “Absolute Torch and Twang” was the best of k.d. lang’s albums because it had the right mix of the serious ballads and the fun songs that make you want to get up and dance. Most importantly, I thought she took advantage of the strength of her voice in the right measure and on the right occasions, not overdoing it. There’s a particular song on the album that when I hear it I often have to completely stop whatever I’m doing and just stand in awe of her amazing vocals. It’s called Pullin’ Back the Reins she sings about love being this uncontrollable thing like a galloping horse that can’t be tamed. I just think the way she performed it is very effective.

My favorite song from the album is Luck in My Eyes. I still listen to it sometimes when I’m feeling kind of down. If I close my eyes and try to envision myself alone on some mountain or plain or wherever the imagery of the song takes me, I feel very calm. Here are some of the lyrics:

I can feel a mountain rain
That’ll wash away
And shine again
Empty my pockets
That were weighing me down
Sift through my soul
To see what’s lost and found
Gonna walk away from trouble
With my head held high
Then look closely you’ll see
Luck in my eyes

Bob Marley and the Wailers’ “Kaya”

The late, great Mitch Hedberg once said, “I used to do drugs. I still do, but I used to, too.” That about sums up all my memories that are linked to Bob Marley’s music.

I really can’t think of anything else that needs to be said about this one.

Favorite track: “Easy Skanking”