25 Albums That Influence My Life
finally a facebook trend that matters
2009-03-11
By Eric Easter
After a couple of years now on Facebook, I’ve scrupulously avoided joining in on the kind of viral application and notes that have wasted so much of my fellow Facebookers' time. I have never poked anyone, done a movie quiz or sent anyone a drink, a smile or suggested a friend that I wasn’t completely sure was a friend. And since my preference is giving as little information as possible as opposed to too much, I definitely avoided the whole “25 Things You Don't Know About Me” trend.
But yesterday a friend sent me her list of 25 Albums That Influenced My Life, and finally – finally – something that started on Facebook made absolute sense. Because music is never just music, it’s a way of life, a transfer of culture, and when it’s good, a window into a new world. There is a reason why we can remember lyrics to songs we’ve heard only once but can forget people we’ve slept with. Oops, wait, is that too much information?
When I put together this list, I took seriously the question of influence. This is not a list of my favorites, mind you, or my list of the best albums, just those that influenced my life in some significant way. If I were to do favorites, in fact, maybe only five on this list would make it.
This list doesn’t even reflect my musical tastes, really – at least not in full. But like marijuana, most of these albums were gateway drugs– things that led me into a deeper, more interesting exploration of a genre, a culture, of my own mind. Such is the power of music.
No doubt you have a list as well.
1. The Temptations - in a Mellow Mood
The Temptations singing show tunes. Very cool or a sellout depending on your view. Influential because it made me understand how vastly different the same songs can be treated by different musicians. Most of the songs on the disc, while classics, are barely listenable in other versions. But in the hands of the Temptations - and Paul Williams in particular – the whole catalog takes on a new dimension.
2. Santana – Abraxas
You could spend hours just trying to figure out the album cover, but Abraxas gave me my adoration for guitar heroes and opened up a love of rock music that has never died.
3. Funkadelic - Maggot Brain
Probably the first album that forced me to stop was I was doing, turn out the light, lie on the floor and just listen.
4. Rare Earth - Get Ready
The song Get Ready and its 21 minutes and 30 seconds of live jamming changed me from a lover of music to someone who wanted to actively play an instrument.
5. Curtis Mayfield – Superfly
This a true story: While other kids in Baltimore’s Gwynns Falls Elementary were singing “The Wheels on the Bus” my third grade teacher, Mrs. Craig, was mimeographing (remember that?) the lyrics to “I’m Your Pusherman.” We literally did an assembly where we sang “I’m your Momma, I’m your Daddy, I’m that nigger in the alley, I’m you doctor when in need, have some coke, have some weed.” For her, a Black man doing a soundtrack was a story of empowerment and a goal for us to work toward. I’m not sure if I should thank her or retroactively call the authorities.
6. Frank Zappa - Over-Nite Sensation
I remember next to nothing about junior high school, except that this album and its twisted, subversive lyrics held together my sanity and was a great outlet for the energy and confusion that came with puberty. Zappa helped me set my own course and be satisfied with my own strange young self. Love for Zappa is the anti-peer pressure.
7. Earth Wind & Fire - Head to the Sky
We think of EWF as an R&B group now, so it’s hard to describe how cutting edge this album was musically and spiritually and how important a message of peace and the promise of higher place was at that time to a whole generation of Black folk.
8. Elton John - Goodbye Yellow Brick Road
Probably the album that defines the power of music as a storytelling device. The lyrics here all paint vivid pictures of people whose lives have gone astray.
9. Weather Report - Heavy Weather
Because it led me to Jaco Pastorius and Wayne Shorter and forced me to question, and, eventually improve, my talents as a musician.
10. P-Funk - Mothership Connection
Surely this doesn’t require an explanation.
11. Prince - Dirty Mind
I was already a Prince fan by Dirty Mind, but Dirty Mind established Prince’s image forever and confirmed for me in a time of searching for identity that weirdness was OK if it goes hand in hand with genius.
12. The Clash – Sandinista
Magnificent Seven. One of the three best rock songs of the 80s. I know folks will disagree. This is my list, not yours.
13. Talking Heads - Remain In Light
This is the music that made me get off of Howard University’s campus and seek out DC’s art -punk scene, which begat a bass playing gig and six years in the underbelly of the grungiest live music clubs in town. Loved it.
14. Malcolm McLaren - Duck Rock
More than any album, Duck Rock confirmed the truly global appeal of Black street culture and honored it rather than stealing it.
15. Eric B & Rakim - Paid in Full
Because it lifted what was just rhyming before to an art form and proved that rap was a musical genre that actually had a future.
16. Thelonious Monk - Live at the Jazz Workshop
Monk swung so hard at this live concert, that I actually consider it a rock and roll album instead of a jazz album. Listening to Monk actually changed my approach to how I did everything in life from that moment on. His chording influenced me to never make the obvious choice.
17. Miles Davis- Someday My Prince Will Come
Everybody has a gateway into an appreciation of Miles, Coltrane and that whole era of creation. This just happened to be mine.
18. Djavan – Lilas
Chances are you’ve heard snippets of the English version of this album done (lamely) by Manhattan Transfer. But the original version in Portugese is dramatically better (and features Stevie Wonder on harmonica). Lilas opened the door to Ivan Lins, Jobim, Caetano Veloso and a lifelong fascination with Brazil, the Candomble religion and the Afro-Brazil connection.
19. Tom Waits – Swordfishtrombones
Every decade or so, some songwriter reminds me that songs are above all, short stories. First it was Elton, but Tom Waits stands beside him, if not above.
20. Fishbone – Fishbone
Fishbone was affirmation of my choice to play rock, even though I couldn’t convince more than two or three Black people to attend my band’s concerts.
21. Bad Brains - I Against I
Oddly, the song that made me abandon my life as a musician – temporarily- because it made me realize that my own music lacked the raw passion that came through in the Bad Brains music. And without that kind of passion, why fake it?
22. Don Pullen – Gratitude
The most hauntingly beautiful piece of piano work I’ve ever heard before or since, I used this as the soundtrack to my lectures for the book, Songs of My People. It’s been my personal theme song since then.
23. A Tribe Called Quest - The Low End Theory
After a low period, Tribe restored my faith in hip hop.
24. MeShell Ndegeocello - Plantation Lullabies
When I published my first magazine venture in DC, ONE, this was the first album I got in the mail from a promoter and it became the official office soundtrack and a reminder of the most fun I’ve had doing anything – ever.
25. Gary Bartz - The Red & Orange Poems
For reasons I haven’t quite figured out, the one album that can always rid me of writer’s block and inspire me to create.
iTunes iMix for My 25 Albums
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