Steve's Top Ten Most Influential Albums
It's a musical trek!

First of all, it's been a very long time since I wrote an actual music review for NP1.  I've been mostly concentrating on the movies and neglected to keep up with my ever-expanding capacities for music.  Why?  Well, I buy CD's pretty often.  Sometimes I'll go all out and pick up two or three in one visit to the mall when I've got a bit of cash left over after bills.  Thing is, I've always liked to mention what I like listening to at the moment on my blog, and the last couple of years I've tried to put together end-of-the year reviews of my favorites.  However, I'd never had enough time to finish them.  It's a shame, really, but I think that they tended to get long-winded anyway, rants about emo and radio pop getting too out of hand.

So, during a recent stretch of boredom at the store, I started to compile a list of albums that I thought were unique to me and my musical tastes.  I whittled it down to ten, and put them in chronological order.  Suddenly, I got an idea... why not write an article about these ten, these CD's that were like benchmarks in my musical education?  Not too bad an idea, I thought.  Actually, a great one.  So here they are:  My top ten most influential albums ever.

Mind you, they're mine, not the ones that music magazines and USA Today like to list every now and then, so don't complain to me if you don't see Sergeant Pepper's or Led Zeppelin IV. 

The Police - Every Breath You Take: The Classics

I can remember one day many years ago, my brother George was visiting from New York.  Whenever he visited, I tried to spend as much time as I possibly could with him, and it didn't matter what he was doing.  It turned out that one of the things he did on this visit was clean out the backseat of his car.  I don't know why he had to, and I don't know why I thought it would be fun to help him, but I did it anyway.  I helped him organize all the things he wanted to hold onto and he came across a cassette tape.  "Here, you can have this, I've got it on CD now, anyway."  He handed it to me, a black case that said "The Police" on it.  "Why?" I asked.  "You can keep it, so you can listen in the car."  George said, "No, it's Sting's old band.  You'll like it."  

That was what sold me on it.  George was a really big fan of Sting, and by association, I liked Sting, too.  So I listened to the tape on my own, and the rest is history.  Every song had me singing along in no time, which annoyed my parents tremendously.  But at least it was The Police, a band of great stature and creativity, which is what continues to excite me about them today.  Sting's lyrics and voice drive their music, which fuses his expert basslines, Andy Summers' inspired guitar work, and Stewart Copeland's sharp drumming.  This collection introduced me to so many different forms of rock that it pretty much serves as an aural Rosetta Stone.  Post-punk, new wave, alternative, rock/reggae, and plain old rock and roll.  It was the perfect foundation for my future musical tastes.  "Roxanne," "Message in a Bottle," "Every Breath You Take," "King of Pain," and "Wrapped Around Your Finger" remain some of my favorite songs.

From here, I continued to listen to Sting's work (to this very day) and appreciate plenty of material from all over.  Every once in a while I'll put this one on and still find something new to it.

U2 - The Joshua Tree

Along with Every Breath You Take, I also took U2's The Joshua Tree with me on any car ride long enough to pack my walkman.  Another of my brother's favorite bands, I took to U2 and this album in particular because it was complete.  Where EBYT was a greatest hits collection, The Joshua Tree was just another album.  Well, not just another... it was phenomenal.  I didn't really know it at the time, but I was hearing one of the best collections of rock ever assembled.  And by four Irishmen, no less.  I don't think there's a single album that has a better opening track than this one... "Where the Streets Have No Name" starts out slowly, and builds in earnest, until it becomes a celebration of love, life, and happiness.  That's what makes U2 perhaps the best band on the planet, they are always positive, and appeal to the masses.  From there, the great tracks just keep on coming, from "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" to "Bullet the Blue Sky" to "With or Without You" to "Red Hill Mining Town..."  Come on, every track on this thing is gold.  Perhaps it was the fact that not only were these guys playing, but names like Lillywhite , Eno and Lanois were also involved in its creation.  

I fell in love with Edge's guitar style, which only continued to excite me when I took up guitar myself.  Bono's lyrics might seem kind of simple at times, but they come from the heart, and his voice has always been powerful.  Bassist Adam Clayton and drummer Larry Mullen Jr. have always been considered "the other two guys in U2," but just because they don't have the charisma as the frontmen doesn't mean they don't manage to complete the package that is this band.  In fact, for years I considered Clayton to be one of the best bassists I'd ever heard (okay, it's still true), and Mullen is a joy to watch in action.  Together, they are superb, always were, and always will be.  I take back all the things I said about them a few years ago, about having lost their touch and becoming self-centered.  Since the tour for All That You Can't Leave Behind (and the new album How To Dismantle an Atomic Bomb), they've been better than ever.

Without a doubt, The Joshua Tree is the kind of album you need to make three copies of in case something happens to the others.  If you don't have this in your collection, there is something terribly wrong with you.  

Blues Traveler - Four

Sometime in the mid-Nineties, I bumped my radio or something, causing the tuner to go out of whack.  I tried to get the old standby stations like Oldies 103 or something, but instead stumbled over a station that happened to be playing popular music of the day.  I quickly settled in with bands like Hootie and the Blowfish, the Wallflowers, and Dave Matthews Band.  But one of my faves of this bunch was Blues Traveler.  They had a bright sound and seemed like the kind of free-spirited band I wanted to get more of.  I ended up getting Four one Christmas, and it had an appeal that grew on me for years.  

At first glance, this was an album that contained a couple of great singles, some decent songs, and a couple of fillers.  I figured that most CDs had this pattern.  But as I went on vacations with my family, I would always find myself packing Four with the CDs I'd take on the trip.  Songs like "The Mountains Win Again" and "Freedom" carried The Road surprisingly well.  Suddenly, I found myself refraining from skipping certain songs and finding something in them I never heard before.  Pretty soon, songs I originally thought too sappy, like "Look Around" or "Just Wait," were actually quite powerful.  There was a balance of ballads and full-on rockers going on here, and I started to truly appreciate it.  

Soon, I dug deeper, picking the songs apart, listening for layers in musicianship.  John Popper, the Eddie Van Halen of the harmonica, could blaze through songs with his harp and howlin' voice.  Chan Kinchla blew me away with his wah-wah pedaled guitar... to this day I relish the sounds of controlled distortion and wah-wah, merging together into a unique sound.  Brendan Hill's drumming was tight, and Bob Sheehan could switch between rock, blues, and funk with ease on bass.  However, in 1999, Sheehan passed away from a drug overdose and has since been replaced by Chan's brother, Tad.  Also, John Popper has dropped what seems to be 300 lbs thanks to an angioplasty.

Four is one of the best-produced albums I've ever heard; it manages to make all the instrumentation seem equal and keeps it in sharp focus all the time.  If you like a good poppy album without all the filler, it's likely to make you smile.  

Eric Clapton - The Cream of Clapton

I never really saw much in the genre known to most as "classic rock" when I was in my early teens.  I saw it as a form from a forgotten era, somewhere between the Beatles and the Stones and 1983, the year I was born.  I didn't know why classic rock rubbed me the wrong way, and I still don't.  Nowadays, I wonder about it even more... as in, "Why not?  This stuff is great!"

Although it would still be a couple of years after receiving The Cream of Clapton that I had this epiphany, you could say I was already primed for it.  This album is a compilation of Eric Clapton's best work from his days with Cream up until the late 70's.  The argument can be made that this is indeed the best time in his career, but we'll skip that and just talk about what's here.  I'm not really sure what turned me on to Clapton so quickly.  It might be the fact that the album begins with five great Cream tracks.  Like The Police, Cream were a power trio ahead of their time.  I just loved the simplicity of it, and Clapton's raging guitar solos that often seemed more expressive than his own voice.  Not saying that his voice isn't any good, I've always loved it.  But the album continued to blow me away, as Blind Faith and Derek and the Dominos kicked out the jams - some of the sweetest riffs and hooks you've ever heard.  You know them all, "White Room," "Layla," "Presence of the Lord," and "Cocaine."  Pop and rock coexisting without a fuss.  

Another reason I think Eric Clapton became such a key for me was the fact that I had just started listening to him at the same time I got my first guitar.  The more I learned about the techniques of the instrument, the more I was transfixed by his style.  And what style might this be?  THE BLUES, BABY.  I still can't play like Clapton, but that doesn't mean I can't love it.  I don't care if you can shred the guitar in a heavy metal band, I'm gonna pick a blues guitarist any day.  To this day, Slow Hand is my favorite guitarist.  Check out The Cream of Clapton to find out why.  If "Badge" or "Sunshine on Your Love" don't tell you why, then I guess you'll just never know.

R.E.M. - Document

It's well-known that R.E.M. is my favorite band, that I know the words to their songs better than Michael Stipe himself, and I could probably remember how to play the chords from "Radio Free Europe" quicker than Peter Buck.  But how does one arrive at such a knowledge of a band?  Where does it begin?  

My buddy Pat got R.E.M.'s Document for me on my fourteenth birthday simply because it featured "It's the End of the World As We Know It" in its tracklisting.  The reason being that the previous summer a film called Independence Day was released, and he, Greg, and I were absolutely obsessed with it.  The hit song of ten years previous was heard on a radio in the film's opening moments as a bit of tongue-in-cheek irony, and we got the joke.  Other than this song and maybe "Losing My Religion," I was pretty much unfamiliar with R.E.M., but that would soon change.  Soon I'd know the names Berry, Buck, Mills, and Stipe better than the names of the Celtics' starting lineup.

Document was the fifth album R.E.M. had made, and the final album recorded on their first label, I.R.S. records.  You could say it's when they really managed to hit their stride and caught fire with the mainstream, thanks to "It's the End of the World" and "The One I Love."  But aside of those eternal hits, it's also chock full of the jangle pop that had made them famous in the first place, like "Exhuming McCarthy" and "Disturbance at the Heron House."  I found pretty much every song here "radio worthy" and Document soon made its way into my heavy rotation over the next couple of years. 

The importance of this album, though, is that it set the ball rolling for virtually every band I've liked since.  In some way, this and the rest of R.E.M.'s body of work has influenced my love of bands like Radiohead, Barenaked Ladies, Pearl Jam, Coldplay, Nirvana, the Cure, and countless others.  It wasn't this CD alone that made R.E.M. my favorite band, but if Pat hadn't gotten it for me, I might be an emo boy at this rate, and for that I must thank him profusely.  

Beck - Odelay

Now it's junior high.  My definition of alternative rock is Gin Blossoms and Hootie.  I need help and I need it fast.  That's why watching Saturday Night Live is a good idea at that age, or at least in those days.  One Saturday evening I stayed up late again, even though I didn't know who was on that night.  Turned out Kevin Spacey was hosting, along with a musical guest who went by the name of Beck.  My immediate reaction was, "Who the hell is he?"  An hour and half later, I had an idea.

Out comes this skinny-ass dude with a smooth haircut and a second-hand suit, strutting and dropping pseudo-rhymes whilst pop-locking and singing through a modulator.  I sat wondering if I liked or hated what I had just seen, but I was intrigued.  However, I pretty much forgot about it when I woke up the next day.  Then, in art class that Monday (yes, I remember this) my teacher says, "Hey, did anyone catch SNL the other night?  Who were those musical guests?  They were wild."  Big Joe pipes up, "BECK!  That guy rules."  It all came flooding back to me, and soon "Where It's At" and "Devil's Haircut" became the songs I had to hear again and again.  Luckily, I had taped the show.  Another TV encounter was soon to come when Beck hit up Sessions at West 54th, a short-lived PBS music show hosted by Chris Douridas.  

I eventually got Joe's copy of Odelay, which he sold to Caleb, so I am the third owner of the particular disc I'm spinning right this moment.  That kind of history is enough to make me smile, but consider the fact that Beck had a knack of combining funk, folk, rock, blues, and just about any other musical style and still make music that made sense and lyrics that proved him to be Generation X's own personal Bob Dylan.  Not only that, but the media took a liking to him as well, as Newsweek and Time were giving Odelay the same glowing reviews that Spin and Rolling Stone did.  The album (named after a misconception over the spelling of the Spanish word oralé) became my ticket into a new kind of music, and changed how I listen to it.  Layer upon layer can be picked away, and I feel pretty confident when I say that I know every pop, buzz, and beat of this album like no other.  Odelay kept me company throughout high school, often while I did homework.  In fact, no CD has ever kept me focused on math more than this one.  

Thanks to Beck, I would continue listening to his work as well as explore new territory with The Flaming Lips, Ben Folds Five (thanks to sharing the hour on Sessions) Modest Mouse, and others.  Odelay is a benchmark not only in my musical tastes, but also for alternative rock.  It's quite possible that it's the coolest album of the 90's. 

Radiohead - OK Computer

Amidst my quest to acquire all of R.E.M.'s recorded material in high school, I found myself learning about more bands that had influenced them or had been influenced by them.  One such band was a group that had been taking the reigns in the United Kingdom for a few years.  They were Radiohead, and had a generous following of smart-kid types.  I didn't understand what made them popular, though, and that's likely because they were the first of many bands I noticed weren't getting radio time on any stations I'd consider listening to.  At this point in time, if I didn't know at least two songs off of a CD from the radio, then I wouldn't consider buying it.  With these guys, I didn't know anything at all, so just purchasing an album would be a big risk.

I'm not sure how I first really heard any of their work.  It's likely that I stumbled on an alternative station by a flukish turn of the dial that happened to favor more obscure and experimental groups.  I do remember hearing "Karma Police" for the first time this way, and something about it fascinated me.  I couldn't understand most of Thom Yorke's wailing, but the instrumentation and the dark style appealed to me.  Eventually, I took a gamble and picked up the widely-acclaimed OK Computer.  A week later I rushed out to the record store to pick up The Bends as well.

OK Computer got me hooked like some sort of drug, and it wasn't for the normal reasons one would think an album sucks them in.  The songs didn't have your normal hooks, no catchy beats, no memorable refrains.  But it was the sum of the parts that made it work.  Yorke's piano and guitar were inspired.  Jonny and Colin Greenwood's experimental guitarmanship wasn't as evident here as it was in the future, but the roots are plain to see.  Ed O'Brien's guitar gave the songs depth that I hadn't heard in songs since The Beatles.  Phil Selway's drumming is incredible, and when mixed with loops and computer enhancement in the future, still manages to be unique to him.  

There are moments in this album that make it more than just another CD; at times it seems epic.  The simple "beep beep beep beep" transition from "Airbag" to "Paranoid Android" sustains the album's opening from five minutes to nearly twelve.  The Macintosh text-to-speech device on "Fitter Happier" is at once darkly comic and terrifying.  Songs like "Lucky" and "No Surprises" have become recognized as some of the strongest written in some time.  

OK Computer is my second-favorite CD of all time, behind R.E.M.'s New Adventures in Hi Fi.  There's too much to say about both of those albums in a capsule review, but suffice it so say, this album opened my mind to more possibilities in music.  If it weren't for this album, I wouldn't see the greatness in Pink Floyd, Coldplay, The Who, and who knows who else.  (Ha ha.)  OK Computer even set the table for some of their heroes' future work; if not for them, U2's Pop and R.E.M.'s Up may have never been what they were (and may not have been two of my other favorites).  

UNKLE - Psyence Fiction

In high school, my buddy Eric was big into musical experimentation.  I've known a lot of people who think they know music and think they're hot onto something big.  Most of them end up being idiots who press a button on a keyboard and think they're a genius, but Eric was different.  I remember wondering what it was that he saw in techno groups and artists like Chemical Brothers, Aphex Twin, and Moby, but then again, this was one of the people who proved to me that Beck had some depth to him.  Amidst watching him set up samplers and turntables as well as laying down his own mix tracks, he got me into some pretty wild stuff, and the prime example of this is Psyence Fiction, by an outfit called UNKLE.  It would be the album that got me hooked on electronic integration into music.

UNKLE was a side project created by producer James Lavelle and vinyl wunderkind DJ Shadow.  Eric loved DJ Shadow, and his style rubbed off on me big time.  Shadow wasn't like most DJs of our time, the guy had a different approach.  His extensive knowledge of the cult-like hip-hop underground served him well in his compositions, often layered over with loops, samples, and drum beats, all creating something that had its own personality.  I never thought I'd get into something like this, but when it's done in such a deliberate manner, I can't help but find the genius and the subtle attitude in it.  

Combined with Lavelle's connections, the UNKLE project started, and Psyence Fiction is its first offspring.  Shadow composed almost all of the music on the tracks, and guest artists join in to flesh it all out.  Some of these performers include Beastie Boys' Mike D, Badly Drawn Boy, The Verve's Richard Ashcroft, and even Radiohead's Thom Yorke.  The overall feel of this album is a sort of sci-fi concept (obviously), and at times it seems to meld together in a Pink Floyd sort of a way, only the music sounds nothing like theirs.  (The album also introduced me to two female artists whom I still know nothing about, Alice Temple and Atlantique.  If anyone at all anywhere has any information on them, I'd like to know.)

Putting it all together, Psyence Fiction was a strange piece of the puzzle in my musical background.  It's a collection that spans hip-hop, soul, rock, and techno.  Many different people contributed, and still it's coherent from beginning to end.  Sure, Lavelle and DJ Shadow oversaw the entire album, but even with several voices in the mix, it's a tight and well-developed project.  Lavelle has since brought UNKLE back for another album, but not to the same acclaim as Psyence Fiction, due to losing much of the star talent behind the previous effort, especially Shadow.  It's unfortunate, but once you hear this CD, you realize that it was really a once-in-a-lifetime project, which is all the more reason to play it over and over again.

The Strokes - Is This It

Whatever music Eric didn't get me into at the end of high school or the beginning of college, Anthony "Quentin Tarantino" Lopez took care of it.  Weezer, Tool, and The Strokes are three of the bands that Tony got me onto, and it was The Strokes who would lead me out of the basement of electronica and into the garage.  The New York quintet was apparently gaining steam, but I was completely unaware of them.  Thanks to Tony, a couple of listens to Is This It got me hooked.

Is This It helped to usher in a whole new generation of bands that liked dressing in suits and relying on '80s nostalgia.  However, unlike bands like The Vines, The Killers, and the latest slew of groups trying to get in on this wave, The Strokes are completely sincere in what they do.  They play music they love and don't make apologies for it.  So what if they are nothing but a band that relies on influences like Television, Ramones, New York Dolls, and even the Rolling Stones?  They're good at it, and even though they've only made two albums at this point (and both sound quite similar), this one in particular proves why the garage rock scene came back, and why The Strokes are still one of its best ambassadors.

The first thing that will catch your attention is the steady pace and rhythm of The Strokes' music, fast, punchy, and certainly catchy.  The trading guitar riffs and solos of Albert Hammond Jr. and Nick Valensi blend together on tracks like "Soma" and "Barely Legal."  Julian Casablancas sounds like he's singing his clever, streetwise lyrics through a telephone (think Taco or even Cake... what's with the food names?).  Fab Moretti is such a gifted drummer that the band has been accused of using a drum machine, and never moreso than on "Hard to Explain."  All the while, Nikolai Frature lurks in the background on bass.  And on this album, in all its lo-fi glory, The Strokes sound just like a band from Manhattan should: fun, fast, and exciting.  It's the kind of music that leads to becoming more than just a fan, but more like a follower.  And being from New York, I love every beat on this album because it's the next best thing to actually being there.  I often get the same charge out of listening to this album as I might get from walking down the street in midtown Manhattan, just soaking in every last ounce of it. 

After discovering this album and this band, I soon found myself in the midst of lots of new music to listen to.  I picked up on Television (also thanks to R.E.M.'s Michael Stipe), devoted plenty of time to The White Stripes, fell in love with Karen O of Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and dabbled in much of the rest of the garage scene.  And as far as I can tell, The Strokes will remain one of my very favorite bands for a long time to come. 

Flaming Lips - Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots

And finally, a couple of years ago, one more band would help unlock the secrets of the universe to me.  After about twenty years of being a relative unknown building up steam like a psychedelic geyser from the heart of Oklahoma, The Flaming Lips had managed to crack the mainstream with the masterful Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots.  I'm not sure exactly what spurred me to investigate the band, but I'm quite sure that Spin Magazine had a lot to do with it.  It seemed that the fine people at Spin (which I started reading to keep up with the post-Strokes world of rock) had become as fascinated as I would soon become with the band's leader, the cheery, greying, bearded guru known as Wayne Coyne.  I had also noticed the band popping up everywhere from ads for Macintosh computers (which also included Abe Vigoda asking Randy Johnson if he was Italian) to collaborations with the likes of The Chemical Brothers and Beck.  Sounded pretty good to me!  So, after visiting their site and making use of their free MP3 player, I soon made the decision to put down some cash.  For the next several weeks, all I listened to was their music.  I was as close to addicted to a rock band as you can be.

From the moment you press play on your CD player, Yoshimi hits you hard with a booming voice that claims, "The test begins... NOW!!!!"  What ensues is a song about the nobility of fighting, or not fighting, for love.  Fighting and love will dominate this album, and it's a crazy emotional roller coaster that will last 47 and a half minutes.  You'll be treated to tales of gigantic pink robots that become cognizant and a young Japanese girl who must fight them to save the world.  You'll hear of time travelers coming to warn you of the future, and be reminded that there's no use in being sad when it's a beautiful summer day.  The bizarre lyrics of Mr. Coyne and his twangy, raspy voice will no doubt coax you into similarly poor singing when you're zooming down the highway.  The incredibly talented Steven Drozd pounds his drum kit with rocking authority in some places, while delivering crazy keyboard and guitar parts in others.  Michael Ivins will round things out with bass skills that are just as much funk as they are punk, while still seeming from another planet.  It's something that is almost impossible to describe, because there are so few bands that create music like this and still make it something you can listen to.

Yoshimi is an album that appeals to the masses in different ways because there is so much going on at any given time.  Strange sound effects float through the soundscape while soothing guitars strum along on slower tracks like "In the Morning of the Magicians."  Thrashing drums and other-worldly keyboards combine with clashing guitars on the explosive instrumental "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, Part 2."  But the strongest track is buried at number nine, the simple-yet-beautiful "Do You Realize??", a pop song from Mars that reminds you "that everyone you know someday will die," but that love is still the greatest constant of all. 

Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots would encourage me to step back in time album by album with the Flaming Lips, such as the almost-as-incredible Soft Bulletin and Clouds Taste Metallic.  The Lips are truly a one-of-a-kind band, but have begun to influence groups they've worked with, especially another new favorite of mine, Modest Mouse.  Who knows where their music will take me next?  Perhaps the possible influences of the Lips are still a way off?  Only time might tell. 

And that's it.  Hope you all enjoyed my little look back on the CDs that have had a big influence on my life.  Now why don't you go and check some of these out and see for yourself?

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