What album changed your life?

[merpk]

Anyone have a specific album that is just too central to your existence, perhaps, or that completely re-oriented your outlook on the world?

Or even that went with a particularly important time in your life?

As a personal start, "Rubber Soul" in my childhood started me on a Beatles' fanaticism that has only mellowed but not died. And I first heard it the year they broke up .

Led Zeppelin's "Zoso" figured prominently in a year of my youth that totally changed my life's direction, from good little girl to ... well, you get the point.

And Spirit's "The 12 Dreams of Dr. Sardonicus" brought me down to earth and helped me grow up, but it was Jefferson Airplane (and friends) with "Blows Against the Empire" that brought me up into the sky again. I remember the first time I heard it, and I can still feel the sensations in my heart and head listening to it, and how it absolutely floored me so ... and redirected me into adulthood.

There's more in recent years, but it would go more appropriately on the spirituality board than here ...

Any other takers?

- Amy

[owensmom]

I'm sure there are many, but the first thing that popped to mind was Depeche Mode Black Celebration. Listened to it a lot, still do, started in 8th grade I guess!

I also discovered Peter Gabriel (or Peget as I just typed... ) - dh bought a greatest hits type album on a whim, and I listened to it obsessively, it was instrumental in getting any college art work done!

[TwinMom]

For me, it would have to be Indigo Girls' "Rites of Passage." I listened to that album obsessively my freshman (and only) year of college, then throughout the pregnancy of my twins. AFter they were born, I played it for them and even now, at 8, they can sing along.

[Lemon Balm]

There are so many that I love. It would be difficult to say one that changed my life as I've been through many musical phases.

Ah, but there is one that changed my life! Tom Waits The Heart of Saturday Night was often THE only thing that helped dd2 go to sleep. When even nursing wouldn't work (or if we were in the car). I could pop that in & within the first few piano notes she'd take audibly deep breaths...then drift off. When not in need of sleep, she even sings along with Depot, Depot. She thinks he's singing her made up word "Beeboo, Beeboo". She giggles and sings along.

[RowansDad]

Darkness On the Edge of Town, Bruce Springsteen - 1978, cut from a HS baseball team, crummy medical diagnosis, still bummy over my father's death. The brooding beauty of this album reminded me that I could get back on my feet, especially if I listened to "Badlands" on 11 (see ).

London Calling, The Clash - Greatest album ever made, exploded in our back yard when I put the speakers out the window during my senior year at HS. Nothing like hearing "Clampdown" while trying to fgure out how to correct the world!

Rubber Soul, Beatles - Brought me back to how great pop can make one feel. Was anti-Beatle for quite a while until I listened to this album over and over and over again. "In My Life" is one of the most beautiful ballads ever recorded by a rock band.

Some Otis Redding 'Greatest Hits' collection - "Try a Little Tenderness" et al. rocketed me into collecting as much soul/R&B as possible.

[cottonwood]

Simon and Garfunkle's Parsley Sage Rosemary and Thyme, I was about 15, and it was hauntingly beautiful, folky, funky, and political. I felt like it defined my passage from the mediocrity of my childhood to the philosophical and spiritual coolness (as I perceived it) of almost-adulthood.

When I was 17 I was being driven home in my friend's boyfriend's sports car, it was pitch black night and his dashboard was lit up with green LCD, and Pink Floyd's ethereal, dark, plaintive, sexy, soulful Wish You Were Here was on the stereo. Ah, I'd never heard anything like it, I was swept away. (And no, I wasn't smoking pot.) That was the album that defined me for the next few years.

Then, in college, I was really feeling like there was just no more good music anymore, and my best friend had come to visit and played me a tape of the Indigo Girls' second album (the one with Closer to Fine.) I thought it was the most beautiful, original, touching music I'd ever heard. Again, that album defined me for the next couple years.

Then... I'd have to say Peter Gabriel's Passion. But since then there's been nothing that's really grabbed me and just been IT.

[merpk]

sweetwater, Pink Floyd was also a major center to my life. "Dark Side of the Moon" and "Meddle" and "Wish You Were Here," and early Genesis: "Foxtrot," "Selling England By the Pound" and "The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway," all were probably the only music I listened to for four, maybe five years.

They remind me of a specific time in my life, some specific people, too, but they didn't change my outlook or my life, though. They were the soundtrack to my life at the time, but not a roadmap.



- Amy

[Etoile]

All of Matthew Sweet's albums were what got me through high school.
Even though a lot of it is melancholy, I was so depressed at the time that it really helped me to feel like someone else knew what I was feeling. Especially in the song "Someone to pull the trigger".
I met him at the end of my Senior Year. It was the highlight of my life up til then.

[Parthenia]

Neil Young's Harvest Moon. The soundtrack of dh's and my courtship. One of the first times we hung out as friends and housemates, getting to know each other, not-yet-my-dh played it, and I thought to myself "what a sweet guy." Then almost a year later, after we had begun dating, once again we were hanging out, listening to it, just vegging on the couch together (we'd just come back from a really long hike and were exhausted). After the song "Such a Woman" we looked at each other and said "Whoa." It both hit us that this was it--we were the "ones".
I have a soft spot in my heart for anything by Neil Young.

[steph]

pink floyd figured heavily in my hs years esp. dark side of the moon and meddle...also todd rundgrens something/anything, which i first heard a few years after it was released was pivotal in my becoming a major todd fan to this day.... i don't know, it seems like so many stages of my life have been marked by the music i'm listening to at the time....right now i'm listening to alot of iz and hawaiian music.....

[JaniceT]

What a great thread!

-- Childhood: Peter Paul and Mommy (we'd listen to that on 8-track in my parents' unairconditioned station wagon on 10-hour trips to Maine)

-- High school: Springsteen's "The Wild, The Innocent, and the E Street Shuffle" (listening to "New York City Serenade" in those gigantic earphones that preceded Walkmans while lying down on the running track cement, looking up at the night sky); The Eagles "Long Run" (I could listen to that bloody album five times a day and never tire of it); The Grateful Dead "American Beauty" (watching the lights of my friend Steve's stereo while being chemically altered: wow, man!).

-- College: Anything Elvis Costello, but especially "My Aim is True" (his first one)

[NewMa]

Most recently: Lucinda William's "Car Wheels on a Gravel Road." The perfect soundtrack to a very bitter, wild, scary, crazy, unstable (yet love-filled) time in my life. A truly amazing album. I don't know if it changed me so much as it made me feel as though I was living in a movie. (Portishead's "Dummy" and the cocteau twin's "Heaven or Los Vegas" had served this purpose years ago). If what I was living was feeling like a movie, than no matter how terrifyingly nutso everything was, I could handle it. Lucinda things okay, even drinking whisky with my best friend while sitting on the floor of the cheap motel room we were living as a whirling furious blizzard kept us from going anywhere. She is forever my goddess.

[indigolilybear]

another pink floyd fan from my early college years...especially the wall.

cowboy junkies got me through a lot, I'd say they're my all time favorite....and still are a favorite. especially college years. listened to "caution horses" during dd's birth.
oh, but "black eyed man" is good too!!

Rent (the musical) I got really into when dd was little....again, i still love it...always peps me up. It reminds me of when after dd was born that I emerged from the new mother stupor and felt young again...vibrant and passionate.

and dh and I fell in love (and into bed! LOL) listening to Ricki Lee Jones' "Traffic from paradise!!" awesome luv music!

[Ms. Mom]

Again, hard to choose one!

The Doors Greates Hits was the first album I ever bought - wrote a book report on Jim Morrison

Joy Division changed me from rock, to alternative - started wearing black and dressing odd - liked my image and felt in control of myslef.

Depech Mode - Black Celebration - same thing!

Sex Pistols - gave me a more punk image and toughend me up!

Then The Furs - Book Of Days - brought me back to black.

Recently, Goo Goo Dolls - A Boy Named Goo - the music moved me as I went through transition in my life. Now Gutterflower is gracing my CD player.

[Forest Sage]

Originally posted by Etoile
All of Matthew Sweet's albums were what got me through high school.
Even though a lot of it is melancholy, I was so depressed at the time that it really helped me to feel like someone else knew what I was feeling. Especially in the song "Someone to pull the trigger".
I met him at the end of my Senior Year. It was the highlight of my life up til then.

I know what you mean Etoile! Matthew Sweet is very special to me too. I especially love "Devil With The Green Eyes" and "I've Been Waiting."

There have been so many 'pivotal' songs and albums...but Jane's Addiction's 'Ritual de lo Habitual' and 'Nothing Shocking' are on top. Those albums were definitely a lifesaver for me.

[ladylee]

I could ditto many here:

IG's Rites of Passage
Lucinda Williams' Car Wheels on a Gravel Road
Joni Mitchell's Blue
REM (many!)
U2 Joshua Tree and Achtung Baby
Sarah MacLaughlan, Fumbling Towards Ecstasy
Toni Childs, House of Hope
John Lennon, Imagine
Led Zeppelin & LZ II
Carole King, Tapestry
Peter Gabriel, So and Us
The Erasure CD with"Always"
Rolling Stones, Let it Bleed
Tori Amos, Under the Pink & Little Earthquakes

Going to load up the cd player now...

[Susana]

This is such an interesting question!
For me, the first album that did anything to me was when I was 13 years old and that album was "Double Fantasy" by John Lennon and Yoko Ono. The songs by John (Yoko's I could take or leave) are amazing. Up until I found this album music was just something on the radio-nothing really hit me like this album did. Then John was killed that December, and I (and the world) was immersed in everything Beatles and thus began my love for the Fab Four. After that, I became and still am a Beatle fanatic. Every album by them is perfection, but my favorite is "Abbey Road" and my favorite song of all time is "Here Comes the Sun"-the beginning guitar on that song makes the hair on my arms stand up! Love it.

[elnachick]

Important ones in my life - James Taylor, Greatest Hits, Simon & Garfunkle, Concert in Central Park, Dave Matthews Band, Before these Crowded Streets, Indigo Girls self titled and Swamp Ophelia albums, ABBA, the Magic of Abba, Jane's Addiction, Nothing's Shocking, Violent Femmes, black album, RENT soundtrack, Peter Gabriel, SO

[Etoile]

Forest Sage, a fellow Matthew Sweet fan, Hooray!

I think my favorite all time song by him is "Born in Sin" which was the b-side to one of the songs off Altered Beast I can't remember which.

At the 2nd concert I saw of his, I yelled "Play Born in Sin!" because a. I love it and b. since it's so obscure I thought he would be impressed.
:LOL

He said "not this time but that's a good one!"

And he threw me his guitar pick.

<<Swoon>>

[TheMoMo]

'August and Everything After' by Counting Crows truly changed my life. Here goes...

In 1995 I was 25 years old, engaged to and living with the man I'd loved since I was 17. I loved him as well as I could, but it was never enough...we were like roommates. He had all the power in the relationship (stemming from money issues I realize now), I took the blame for everything. He was very unaffectionate, unemotional, took pride in it too. I found myself feeling very middle-aged and wished that I could have another life, so I could live out that one but still have another one to do things differently. That summer I bought the new Counting Crows album. It was the first 'youth' album I'd bought in ages (grunge just passed me by) and it really stirred something in me. I listened to it constantly, all but the last song. I didn't like that last song....it made me uncomfortable, so I would run to the cd player from wherever I was in the house to start the cd over and skip that last song. Finally, one day I really sat and listened to it and I knew I couldn't stay in this life. It was like it was speaking to me, and I just sat on the floor crying. Two weeks later my fiance bought a computer and within a week I'd met my now-dh on Prodigy. It was like water on a dried-out, sun-baked sponge...he loves me so well. I know that that song, 'Murder of One' cleared the way for me to leave my old life. Here are the lyrics that really touched me:

"All your life is such a shame, shame, shame
All your love is just a dream, dream, dream
Are you happy when you're sleeping?
Does he keep you safe and warm?
Does he tell you when you're sorry?
Does he tell you when you're wrong?
I've been watching you for hours
It's been years since we were born
We were perfect when we started
I've been wondering where we've gone
All your life is such a shame
All your love is just a dream

There's a bird that nests inside you
Sleeping underneath your skin
When you open up your wings to speak
I wish you'd let me in
All your life is such a shame
All your love is just a dream
Open up your eyes
You can see the flames of your wasted life
You should be ashamed
You don't want to waste your life
I walk along these hillsides In the summer 'neath the sunshine
I am feathered by the moonlight falling down on me

Change, change, change"

Maureen