Albums That Changed My Life 10: Everything Else

In the last Albums That Changed My Life entry I discussed the "Alternative" or Grunge bands which I listened to through high school.  After that point - a period in which I listened to Grunge and Thrash music to the exclusion of almost everything else - my taste in music grew a lot more diverse.  Part of the reason for this was college.  I was meeting a lot of new people who listened to many different kinds of music.  Another part of the reason was the purchase of a turntable, which allowed me to discover a lot of the late 60s and early 70s music I'd missed earlier on.  Looking back at that time from 2021, I can see my ears really opening up for the first time.  No longer obsessed with what was "cool" or "new," I was really hearing the music I was exposed to, and judging a lot of music on its own merits.

What follows is a list of bands I've listened to since college.  Maybe you like some of this stuff too.

1. Reggae

I listened to Buju Banton's Til Shiloh a lot in college.  Alpha Blondy and Steel Pulse were also in heavy rotation on my car stereo.  I've never been a huge Bob Marley fan, but I've owned several of his albums.  African Herbsman is probably my favorite.

2. Late 60s Rock

I've gone back and forth through this genre so many times.  The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and all that came after.  One of my favorite 60s bands is Arthur Lee's Love, but there are countless other great bands from that era.

3. Glam Rock

This is a huge one for me.  Sometime in college I bought Ziggy Stardust, and from that moment on I was hooked.  Bowie's albums were strangely difficult to find at the time, but after tracking down everything from his first album to his early 80s stuff I moved on to T-Rex and Roxy Music.  I still listen to some of those albums - especially Lou Reed's Transformer and Mick Ronson's Slaughter on 10th Avenue - quite a lot.

4. Progressive Rock

Another huge one for me, and in many ways the polar opposite of Glam Rock.  ELP's Tarkus album is still my favorite, but I've loved Yes, Genesis, Jethro Tull, Gentle Giant, Procul Harum and all those bands at one time or another.  Later albums by many of these bands SUCK, but when they were great they were truly great.

5. Metal

I'm not even sure where to start with Metal.  I've moved back and forth between genres and regions over the years, going from the NWOBHM bands to Thrash, and from there to bands as diverse as Mastodon, Bathory, Opeth, Animals as Leaders, Meshuggah and some of the more fringe "Metal" like the stuff Alex Skolnick was doing with Michael Manring.  When Metal is good I love it more than anything else.

6. Classical

I started off with the Baroque composers: Bach (most of all), Vivaldi and Albinoni.  From there I moved on to the likes of Beethoven, Brahms and other composers of that era.  My favorite era for Classical music is probably the early 1900s, when Russian composers such as Rachmaninov and Prokofiev were doing really exciting things.  I like Philip Glass and some of the other Minimalist composers too.

I've never liked Wagner, Mozart or Tchaikovsky though.  I can't fully explain why.

7. Jazz

One of the first LPs I ever bought was Bitch's Brew.  That album blew me away.  It sounded nightmarish and beautiful at the same time.  I've since moved on to Miles Davis' other albums, and I'd have to say that Miles in the Sky has become my favorite of his albums.

After Miles, Keith Jarrett is probably my second favorite.  His The Survivor's Suiteblew me away as well.  That chord progression that just builds and builds.  It's amazing.

My favorite Jazz Fusion album is definitely Billy Cobham's Spectrum.  I liked The Mahvishnu Orchestra, but never as much as other Fusion bands from the same period.

Ornette Coleman's Skies of America was another big one for me.  I love that album.

8. Mandarin and Taiwanese Music

I've lived in Taiwan since 1999, and although the amount of Mandarin or Taiwanese music I listen to is very small, I do still enjoy it sometimes.  Wu Bai was one of the first local musicians I liked, but I've never been a huge fan.  I've owned CDs by Wang Fei and Teresa Teng, and I thought that Jay Chou's most popular album (the one they play on the radio endlessly) had some great songs on it.

9. Later Alternative Bands

Anyone else remember Shudder to Think?  Frank Black's solo stuff?  Rage Against the Machine?  311?  Ozomatli?  I still listen to that stuff occasionally.  It brings back a lot of memories.

7. World Music

I once owned an album by the name of Afro Rock that I listened to incessantly.  It was like James Brown went to Africa and personally told every awesome band there to record a song.

Of course when I say "World Music" I mean everything outside North America and the UK.  With respect to that definition I've enjoyed Chinese Classical, Bollywood soundtrack, Indian Classical, music from several South American countries, Mariachi, Tango, Bluegrass, Thai Pop, Gamelan and Buddhist chanting.  As far as this almost endless category goes, I listen to more music from Africa than anything else, with Bollywood being a close second.

8. Rap

Like a lot of guys my age I know the lyrics to several Public Enemy, LL Cool J and Doctor Dre songs.  Am I a huge rap fan?  No, not by a long shot, but there were periods of my life when certain albums captivated me.  Busta Rhymes' Extinction Level Event, for example, or that album by Hieroglyphics, 3rd Eye Vision.

"Life is a blast when you know what you're doing / Best to know what you're doing / 'Fore your life get ruined / Life is a thrill when your skill is developed / If you ain't got a skill or trade then shut the hell up!"

9. R & B / Funk / Disco

Motown.  Yeah.  I've spent years in Motown.  James Jamerson, Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, The Jackson Five, Diana Ross.  There's some excellent music there, some top-notch songwriting - even if people conveniently forget all the songs that WEREN'T hits.  For me the biggest of all is Stevie Wonder, whose early 70s output was fantastic.

Then of course, as the 70s wore on the Motown stuff morphed into Funk and Disco.  I have obsessed over several of Parliament/Funkadelic's early albums, even if their later stuff was lost on me.  Disco?  I think some of the later, non-American interpretations of that genre are more interesting, especially what showed up in soundtracks during the later 70s and early 80s.

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