Wednesday, December 29, 2010

15 Albums...part 3

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've broken it into a bite-sized, 3x5 format.....This is part three, w/ albums 11-15--see Monday & Tuesday for 1-10 if you're so inclined....If you've not done this yourself, it's worth it to take a few minutes....and be in touch!

And thanks for the kind feedback, memories, etc...

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

11. Foje: 1982 (1996) What turned out to be Lithuania's biggest rock band's swan song was released months before I arrived to teach English in February 1997, and I blew seeing their farewell concerts that summer (chronicled on the live set Vilnius. Kaunas. Klaipėda [1999]), though I made up for it by seeing Andrius Mamontovas solo a number of times. Foje was crucial to my Lithuanian education in several ways: their lyrics gave me fodder for early language lessons; the breadth and depth of their fanbase underscored to me the presence of a whole national pop culture of which I was only getting the haziest of clues; and their serving as a key into contemporary Lithuanian culture nudged me (ever so politely) to understand that I just had to think beyond cinema in my, erm, scholarship.... Their last album was my first, but by the time I left for IU I had the entire back-catalog on cassette--subsequent fieldwork meant subsequent securing of same on CD, along with the run of Mamontovas solo work. Research, don't you know...

12. V/A: The Inner Flame (1997) This tribute disc was released as a fund-raiser for guitarist Rainer Ptacek that first summer in Lithuania--by the time my parents sent me a dub that Christmas, he was gone. I only saw him play once, at Club Congress in Tucson. I remember thinking he was a roadie when he first went up on stage, ballcap and all--then I remember him doing amazing things with steel guitars and digital delay loops. I subsequently searched all over Tucson filling in his back-catalog (typically, much of his stuff is only available from a German import label). This record connected me back to Tucson, and his picture was on the wall of my Šeduva classroom until the end of my career as a Lithuanian secondary school teacher...

13. Radiohead: OK Computer (1997) Back in the day, in Lithuania, you could buy pirated cassettes of just about anything. And not just in Vilnius, either: I believe I bought this on tape at a kiosk in Utena for five litas (which, given the old 4:1 exchange rate, I can assuredly assert came to all of $1.25). Sure, it appeared to have been pressed in Belarus. Sure, two of the songs had been deleted (due to time constraint or musical taste, I'll never know). Sure, the order of the remaining songs was quite different from the "proper" release. But I'll take my 10-track Belarussian tape over your CD any day of the week....

14. Miles Davis: Kind of Blue (1959) It took me a long time to even start to appreciate jazz--and I've got a lot to learn. I find myself feeling defensive that I've got what could be considered such a "cliche" of a record on this list, but the truth of the matter is that there is no single record I have listened to in the past five years than this one. Every semester I find myself grading more than I ever imagined when I put together my syllabi (note to self: less grading this spring!), and this is a record to grade to, to read to, to relax to, to write awkward sentence constructions to. You know what I mean.

15. John Coltrane: A Love Supreme (1964) If Miles is someone with whom I can do a ton of academic work (at least on that release), 'Trane is not. John Coltrane demands your attention--not at first, but soon enough. And it's only worse on the deluxe re-release that includes a rare live set of the entire suite (complete with pissed-off French crowd that wants more!)... A Love Supreme refuses to be functional--it's too much for that. Hearing the band repetitively sing/chant the title--it's as close as anything I can think of to a zen moment.

Tuesday, December 28, 2010

15 Albums...part 2

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.....This is part two, w/ albums 6-10--see yesterday's post for 1-5 if you're so inclined....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):

6. Brian Eno: Before and After Science (1977) Sophomore year of college at Gustavus--and the vast majority of our studying was done at the North Mankato Perkins restaurant, the only 24-hour cafe/diner/coffee shop to be had in the area. Ace and I would bring our Walkmen and a stack of tapes to study with. I think I read about Eno in Rolling Stone as not only the producer of debuts by Ultravox and Devo, of key albums by Bowie, Talking Heads, and now U2, but also as a solo artist of merit (after a one-record stint with Roxy Music)... I think I'd bought a tape used at Bookman's in high school, but never got my head around it until one night I happened to throw it in my Walkman whilst eating a PeterBert Special (we ate there so often we could order OFF the menu if certain cooks were working). What is it that just CLICKED that night, after several years of having that tape just sitting around? The music hadn't changed--but maybe I was. "No One Receiving," "Backwater," "Julie With...," "Spider & I".... So many great songs here! This jump-started me to first fill out the "vocal" back-catalog from the '70s, and then start in on the ambient stuff....

7. The Stone Roses: The Stone Roses (1989) I must confess that even while I was studying at UEA that Fall of 1989, I was aware of how big The Stone Roses and Happy Mondays were (ah the weekly purchases of NME and Melody Maker!), but I hadn't fully investigated until back stateside. My story is that I spent my money on trips to Scotland, Ireland, France, Germany...which is true! But it's also true that I was measuring each purchase in terms of the number of Guinness pints sacrificed otherwise. Still, once back at GAC to finish my junior year, I played this disc into the ground--I even remember having an absurd argument with two fellow-travelers over who got into the Roses first. How could a debut album be this perfect? And how could it all dry up so soon?


8. Kitchens of Distinction: The Death of Cool (1992) Having graduated college, having made a mess of my personal life, and thus having moved back to AZ for a time, only to move back to MN for a while more, I was plotting my next move from a shared apartment in Uptown. Somehow I got the biggest bedroom in a shared 3-bedroom apartment, despite having the least furniture. I kid you not: we set up a fully-functional train set I got for Christmas in my bedroom, with the TV in the middle to count down the New Year of 1993. This is an album full of sonic space--big enough to step inside, and try to figure out how to invite someone else in, too. Seeing Kitchens at First Ave. was a treasure--they seemed honestly gobsmacked at the positive feedback they were getting from the crowd (as an opener for 99.9-era Susanne Vega). One more album and they were gone...

9. Tindersticks: Tindersticks (1993) It used to be an annual rite to try to track down the year-end issues of both New Musical Express and Melody Maker to get a look at their year-end best-of lists. This was a crucial record from UT days, although I might have picked it up originally in Bloomington studying Czech Summer 1994. The dark and moody atmosphere lent itself to any number of late night study sessions, writing blitzes, and sleep soundtracks. I remember hearing Curtains (1997) playing at a record store in Poznań several years later, recognizing the band on the spot, and willingly handing over all the złotys I had...


10. Everything But The Girl: Walking Wounded (1996) Sure, the papers cried foul: folksters coming late to the trip-hop party, and all that. But the tunes were there, and it captured a weary determination that permeated our mid-90s circle of friends in St. Paul. This was one of the cassettes I took with me to Lithuania in '97, which seemed again to strike the right chords. Ben Watt had nearly died before he made this album, which could then easily be heard as a rebirth, as a redefinition of who they were going to be as a band. After having to walk away from NYU, and going to Lithuania to teach, I too was hitting the reset button... At the time, it felt like the hardest decision of my life--but in retrospect it was one of the best decisions I ever made....

Monday, December 27, 2010

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!).....