15 Albums...

Too long a hiatus from writing--the blog (to say nothing of the book proposal) has gone to seed in recent months. What is Winter Break if not a chance to jump-start neglected projects, New Year's resolutions, yadda yadda yadda? So here's a comfy way to ease back in: taking a cue from the "15 Albums" thread that circulated through Facebook last summer, I'm finally writing a bit from the list I'd jotted down after getting to enjoy several of your posts....To embellish and/or spread it out a bit, I'll break it into a bite-sized, 3x5 format.....If you've not done this yourself, it's worth it to take a few minutes....and be in touch!

Bjorn's 15 Albums (in chronological order of when I got hold of them):

1. The Beatles: Revolver (1966) My parents were big Beatles fans--dad in particular. I had this Fischer Price plastic record player with which I used to listen to my records as a little boy...Well, OK, they weren't mine--I'd bugger off with dad's records at four years old, and listen to them in the basement.... "Tomorrow Never Knows" is still one of my favorite songs.... So not only would I scratch them all to hell (imagine the stylus quality of that Fischer Price--go ahead, I'll wait), but I would also let them pile up unsleeved on the floor of that red-painted, cement floor. Do you think I protected those records before we played dodge ball or football or Nils Patrol (a whole other shame spiral)? Riiiiight. So if the meat grinder of a record player didn't get them, the red paint embedded in the record's grooves from kids' stepping/slipping on the stacks of vinyl did. Dad got a working copy of Revolver again when the Beatles did their first CD catalog roll-out in the 1980s...other albums from this early period that I destroyed included CSN&Y's 4-Way Street (1971), which I actually replaced for him on vinyl after a PDQ run...

2. Kiss: Alive II (1977) After cycling through my neighbor's 7" single collection (Gary Puckett & The Union Gap, represent!), I found my first band. Well, I found them through Troy (one of my best friends around this 3rd grade period), who had found them from his older brother. The blood! The noise! The make-up! The (barely) double-ententes that we didn't understand ["You pulled the trigger of my love gun"? Nothing. "She wants a rocket ride"? Nada. I kid you not.]! This wasn't my first record of theirs (that'd be Destroyer [1976]), and it wasn't the record I quasi-conned Grandma Merrifran to buy for me (Dressed to Kill [1975]?)--and it's not even the double-live Kiss record that I'm supposed to have liked more (that would be Alive [1975]). But this was something that was mine--something I shared with my friends that my parents tolerated, but never embraced. Looking back, maybe all those Kiss posters on my wall were doing some serious identity work...

3. Queen: News of the World (1977) The first post-Kiss album I bought with my own money, in 5th or 6th grade... Not too radical a break from early elementary school, I grant you, but it was still an important transition. "Sheer Heart Attack" and "It's Late" were on heavy heavy rotation, if only in my bedroom. This arena rock vein continued into junior high (Styx! Led Zep!) and even early high school (Def Lep! Crüe!), though it came up against a growing interest in pop music (see Rock, Vol I [1981], my first-ever mix tape of 7" singles, from Pat Benetar to Foreigner) and its new wave variants (Human League! Devo! Gary Numan [see below]!)....

4. Gary Numan: Telekon (1980) I'd bought the 7" of "Cars" at the time, but hadn't pursued Mr Webb any further until I came across this album in the $1.99 cutout section at the Musicland in Tucson's El Con Mall. I distinctly remember scrutinizing this album with dad's headphones over and over while pouring over the liner notes. This was the musical break with my rocker friends--this is where I was finally more "Whip It" than W.A.S.P....The blame for my Tama Techstar electronic drum set can probably be pinned on this record too (although I learned to play it by spending way too much time with the self-titled A Flock of Seagulls [1982]...I still have a slab of vinyl inches thick of Gary Numan records (domestic releases, imports, singles, you name it)--seeing him in Boston within a month of moving to New England took me right back to the days of Alice Vail Junior Jail....

5. U2: The Joshua Tree (1987) Fast-forward to spring of senior year of high school, and there I am with Bret (then-editor of the Rincon Echo--I was the "Arts & Entertainment Editor or some such thing) camped out for U2 tickets. (Remember "camping out" for tickets?!) U2 opened their tour that year in Phoenix on April 4th (!) in response to then-Gov. Mecham's policy to be the last state in the union to not adopt MLK Day as a state holiday. (Tucson was two shows later.) I think that show was the week I saw U2, X, and Hüsker Dü all in the same week. And in December, they wrapped up the tour again in AZ, as Jack P. scored tickets for the show being filmed for Rattle & Hum (1988). I never managed to finish that cassette with all the extra tracks from the singles, but the recent re-release satisfied all the completists out there. And of course, "U2" will always be remembered as the Hangman answer that stumped Eric's brother Paul on a OSLC camping trip ("U....question mark?" NOOOOO! "U.....period?" NOOOOO!).....