A few last thoughts on the nine-album challenge, the friends who opened those doors, and this week’s playlist.
If you’ve been on Notes this week, you might’ve noticed that the “9 albums that formed me” challenge is inescapable. (And if you’re not, and you’re wondering what the heck I’m talking about, congratulations!) I’m mindful that we’ve already spent a lot of oxygen and column inches on the topic, but if you’ll indulge me just a little bit more here, I want to make a couple of last points before we resume our normal doomscrolling media consumption.
I’ve leaned really hard into the formative part of the prompt. One of the things that I keep circling back to is the delta between the ones you could say formed me—or at least sent me on a different trajectory—and the ones that I actually play with any frequency.
For example, Van Halen’s 1984. A record I likely haven’t listened to in full for 30 years. It’s good, but it’s not even VH’s best (take a bow, VH II). But it was the gateway to meeting my best friend—one who’s held that title long enough that one of us is a grandfather now. He’s also responsible for tipping me off to Public Enemy, Metallica, and Slayer, and he tried his damnedest to get me into Sepultura, but I digress. While we’re here, you could probably add R.E.M.’s Green to the pile—we saw the band together on this tour. This was also the only show we ever went to together—something that still surprises me when I think about it.
George Benson makes the cut, too. If you’ve ever seen the picture of a little kid listening to records on our page, that’s me, and the odds are good that it’s George Benson playing in my headphones. I don’t have a specific LP I can point to as formative per se, but Breezin’ is probably as solid a pick as any. Mostly, it turned me on to the idea of (sonic) fidelity, pop sensibilities, and being genre-agnostic (yes, even during my most insufferable years).
New Order will be on there because, well, yeah. How could they not be? But so too will Talking Heads’ Stop Making Sense and Pixies’ Surfer Rosa. Both are “palatable” picks, of course, but both first hit my ears after being pressed into my hand by a friend who urgently told me I had to hear ’em. Both are totemic of an incredible era of music discovery for me, and both LPs successfully rearranged my mind. They still do, really. That’s formative in its own right, but really, each was also a gateway drug to a whole slew of other records; it’s a rabbit hole I still haven’t found the bottom of.
I don’t know where on the grid Young Gun Silver Fox’s West End Coast will be, only that it warrants a box. A man named Brian Davis turned me on to them after tagging me in a tweet. He described ’em as “in the pocket” and was sure I’d like them. He was correct on both counts. He’s no longer with us.
The takeaway here was that I realized one could actually find good records via friends you only meet online. What a sweet relief from the Reddit viper pits this was! In a roundabout way, he was part of why/how the ball got rolling on this here newsletter.
I always say a record finds you at just the right time. Well, so too do the people who put them in your hands/ears. My dad was a jazz guy, so I suppose some osmosis was a given, but the only reason I knew the kids I did growing up is that our parents all decided separately to buy homes in the same suburb. I also happened to live on the boundary line for my school (literally, actually), so were it not for a few feet or a different lot, this list would be entirely different. Some real “sliding doors”–type stuff! That’s infinitely interesting to me—way more than filling the grid with critics’ picks or whatever—and as I scroll a TL awash with these things, that’s what I find myself thinking about the most.
On to this week’s playlist:
Speaking of gateway records, Mike Connell of The Connells was on Matty C’s podcast last week, and that led me back to the band’s One Simple Word LP, which I first found on 120 Minutes. That record then opened the door to pretty much every other band in the Raleigh-Durham area (Superchunk, Archers of Loaf, The Veldt, etc.). Dharma Bums make an appearance and take me back to those “formative” years of cheap shows in PDX. Ditto Hammerbox and Completely Grocery. The latter’s shows were legendary and now really exist only in the minds of people lucky enough to say they were there. Lotsa good music and bad decisions, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything.
Closer to my current home, we’ve got Madison’s Red Pants and Clay Pigeons. The latter is a high school band. The kids are alright!
We’ve also got tracks so new they’ve still got the window sticker on, from Wishy, THAO, BODEGA, Soft Vein, Jess Williamson, and Avery Friedman. Note: if you’re a fan of Robert Longo’s Men in the Cities photo series, check out Soft Vein’s video for “All We’ve Known of Heaven.”
KA—
The Playlists: | Apple | Qobuz | YouTube Music | Tidal (NEW) |
Now it’s your turn.
What’s been exciting you lately? Any releases or shows you’re looking forward to? Whatcha got? Share your thoughts in the comments!
