Gonna do the 20 covers 20 day thing for albums, where you choose 20 albums that greatly influenced you and post one a day. You aren't supposed to explain/review, but, uh, I'm likely going to say some stuff. Okay, in autobiographical order:
1. Amy Grant - Lead Me On (1988)
This is the first album I remember buying with my allowance, bought on cassette hence the cassette cover image.
2. Petra - Beyond Belief (1990)
This is the band I credit for my getting into metal, even though I realized later that they're not metal at all. Again, got it on cassette, so cassette cover it is.
3. Jars of Clay - s/t (1995; 1996 platinum reissue)
This is the first album I remember claiming as my own, has the first song I remember getting really obsessed about, and is the first time I remember caring about stuff like limited/numbered releases (hence the "platinum" reissue cover). I can't take the lyrics anymore (very religious), but the music itself holds up.
4. Five Iron Frenzy - Upbeats and Beatdowns (1996)
I bought this album as a joke and then the band ended up being my favourite for a decade, got me into ska and, ultimately, how I met @MetalheadDana. Also introduced me to the wonderful world of the young Internet - I lived on the FIF message board for years, made some great friends that I talked to into my undergrad years, even met one IRL. Some songs have religious lyrics, others are just fun.
5. AFI - Black Sails in the Sunset (1999)
This is the first album I latched onto when I was finally allowed out of the cave I grew up in, the first album that got me so jacked up that I wrote about it (for an English uni course), the first and only band I paid to join the fan club of. Also the first album in this list of 20 that I still love.
6. Living Sacrifice - The Hammering Process (2000)
This album was the start of me listening to extreme metal to relax/focus, being my regular soundtrack for studying organic chemistry - I made sure it was always in my bag with my discman my whole undergrad. They were a Christian metal band that started as thrash/death metal, but this album is (really solid) groove metal/metalcore.
7. Hans Zimmer and Lisa Gerrard – Gladiator soundtrack (2000)
Also in regular rotation in my discman during my undergrad. First film score I got obsessed with.
8. mewithoutYou - [A-->B] Life (2002)
If I had to pick one "album to know me", it would be this one. Saw them before this (their debut) came out and HATED them, but by the time I heard the album, I had changed my tune. They became my favorite band of all-time, never let me down. I miss them dearly.
9. Björk - Medúlla (2004)
This was the first Björk album to come out after I became a fan, and it remains both my favorite Björk album and one of my all-time favorites. Also was my introduction to Tagaq.
10. Elliott Smith - From a Basement on the Hill (2004)
I can still remember seeing the newspaper article announcing Elliott Smith's death, exactly where it was in the entertainment section, the size, the photo used. He was working on this album when he died, and it was released a year afterwards. Even 20 years later, every listen is like visiting a memorial.
11. The Appleseed Cast - Peregrine (2006)
I was already into this band (i.e., Chris Crisci) before this album, but this one made them an all-time favorite. Was so happy to finally catch a live show right before the pandemic - was ridiculous that there were only like 30 people there, but it was glorious.
12. Sigur Rós - Von (1997)
This album scared the shit out of me the first time I heard it, and then it somehow became the album I listened to to fall asleep when I used to travel on my own, and now it is the album I reach for whenever I have trouble sleeping at home.
13. Philip Glass - Satyagraha (1985)
I used to work in a lab processing donated blood, a job that attracted very interesting people. An older coworker invited me to go see the livestream of the Met Opera's (2011) performance of Satyagraha, screening at a local theatre. That was my intro to Glass, and I was instantly hooked. It wasn't until recently that the recording of that Met performance was released, so this is the one I listened to since.
14. Pearl Jam - MTV Unplugged (1992)
In 2012, I discovered what the kids used to call "grunge". @MetalheadDana had done his best to get me into it earlier, but it wasn't until I was grading 1st year Engineer students' English papers that I found the video of this performance, and I became proper obsessed with Pearl Jam, then Alice in Chains, and then that whole era of music. Became the first era I started kinda seriously collecting records from.
15. Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - Push The Sky Away (2013)
Though Henry Rollins had already thoroughly schooled me in Nick Cave à la The Birthday Party, it wasn't until 2016 when I was some 30,000+ feet in the air that I actually gave a Bad Seeds album a listen. I found this on Icelandair's entertainment system and listened to it on repeat the entire flight to Iceland. Such a mood, and forever now linked to Iceland.
Also wanted to say that I created a Discogs account in 2016 just so I could buy a copy of Push The Sky Away on vinyl, the first of MANY Discogs purchases, lol. So while the album cost only $17.28, it's to blame for a lot more than that...
@buffyleigh Despite friends being into him, I never gave Nick Cave much thought before seeing this interview clip last night. Now I need to dive into his work.
the buff who fell to earth
mkb