What record had the most influence on developing your musical tastes?

Discussion in 'Music and Recordings' started by crazychile, Jan 4, 2017.

  1. Deep Funk

    Deep Funk Deep thoughts - Friend

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    James Brown - Funky Drummer

    That song made me a B-Boy and crate digger. The long version of this track still takes me away.

    Eric B. & Rakim - Paid In Full

    Hip Hop can make you dance and think. This album got me into Hip Hop. A bit of a standard.

    Kyuss - Apothecaries' Weight


    This song really got me into Metal and Hard Rock. How? A Metal head told me there was a bass solo in this song, good one indeed.

    King Crimson - In The Court Of The Crimson King

    This album changes everything. It redefines everything you think you know about music.

    J.S. Bach - Orgelwerke Toccaten & Fugen by Ton Koopman

    The beauty of layered complexity finds its peak here, simply epic.

    David Bowie - Several compilations and albums

    His music opened my mind for different music (Kate Bush, Lykke Li, Prince, Daft Punk etcetera...)

    Beethoven - Symphony no. 5 by Klemperer

    Recently I discovered the nine Symphonies. The 5th pulls you in and when it lets you go, you feel your heart beating...

    Tool - Lateralus Fibonacci Order (see "the gift")

    A slow burner at first but when you get into it, yeah it changes how you think about music, especially the title track.
     
  2. Merrick

    Merrick A lidless ear

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    The Beatles - Anthology 1, 2, 3

    I wasn't into music much until I was 11 years old. The Beatles Anthology was premiering on TV and my dad was a huge Beatles fan as a kid, so he had me sit down and watch it with him. I was astonished by how good the music was. I hadn't heard much music that resonated with me before, and this was striking a real chord with me. My dad bought the Anthology albums and also the original studio albums on CD. I devoured them all. I listened to nothing but The Beatles and some of their solo records for about a year. I was obsessed. From there my dad turned me on to The Stones and The Who and a few other of the staple classic rock bands, Zeppelin and Hendrix and such. But for me The Beatles were king, until...

    David Bowie - Best of Bowie 1969-1974 (and additionally Low, Heroes, Lodger, Scary Monsters)

    I picked up this new at the time Bowie compilation because I recognized a few of the song titles ("Ziggy Stardust" seemed like a name I had seen somewhere, "Space Oddity" and "Changes" I had heard on the radio, and the comp also had his cover of "Let's Spend the Night Together" and the original version of "The Man Who Sold The World", which I knew from the Nirvana Unplugged album). I got home and put it on the little stereo I had in my room, sat down by my bed and began looking through the booklet. I was entranced. The booklet was full of images from Bowie's glam period, and he truly did feel alien and exotic. Being a teenager, I also responded to the ambiguous sexuality of his persona. The music was even better, full of drama, mystery, and really fantastic melodies/hooks/performances. My jaw dropped when "Life On Mars" started. I had never heard a song that achingly beautiful before. (Side note, years later I saw Bowie perform on a package tour with Moby, Busta Rhymes, and the Blue Man Group. When Bowie's set started, the sun was just setting, and Mike Garson came onto the stage and played the opening notes of "Life On Mars". Bowie walked out onto the stage wearing a long white scarf that trailed behind him, catching in the wind. He sang the song accompanied only by the piano, and other than some initial applause for his entrance, there was no other sound. I started crying out of happiness, flashing back to that night as a teenager hearing that song coming out of my stereo for the first time.)

    I of course immediately sought out all of Bowie's albums. This was when the Ryko releases were the most recent, and they had a wealth of bonus tracks. I remember being really blown away by the fearless experimentation of Low, "Heroes", Lodger, and Scary Monsters. Those records opened me up to bands and artists that weren't just mainstream classic rock. To me Bowie is the lynchpin that my musical world revolves around. Going through his influences opened new musical vistas for me, allowing me to discover The Stooges, T. Rex, The Velvet Underground (and solo Reed, Cale, Nico), and Scott Walker, while learning about the artists he collaborated with or influenced turned me on to Siouxsie and the Banshees, Wire, NIN, Roxy Music, Brian Eno, Pulp, Blur, and so much more. His willingness to experiment made me excited to hear more experimental music, eventually leading me to The Residents, early Philip Glass, Laurie Anderson, Kraftwerk, Faust, Can, John Zorn, Yoko Ono, and among others...

    Steve Reich - Music For 18 Musicians

    I've written about this piece before. It's an hour long minimalist composition that to me is one of the essential recordings of the 20th century. It feels so organic, like it was birthed instead of written. It's not clinical or analytical like many minimalist compositions. It breathes and ebbs and flows. It's a masterpiece of musical expression. This piece got me into contemporary symphonic music, which I was able to then trace back through the history of symphonic music, from Stockhausen to Beethoven, Mozart to Bach, also leading me to opera. In a satisfying full circle, I turned my dad on to a lot of classical that he hadn't paid close attention to before, and he got hooked, stopped listening to anything but classical, and ended up buying hundreds of classical CDs from cheap lots on ebay. He even bought an ADC so he could rip classical vinyl to digital. I don't even bother with vinyl rips but he got into it for his own listening. Before he went headlong into classical though, he did express a love for jazz, leading me to do my own explorations into that genre and discovering...

    Miles Davis - Sketches of Spain

    Jazz is such a broad form of music that it took me a while to find something that really hooked me. To this day I don't really love big band jazz for example. But I heard Sketches of Spain and I knew I had found my entry point into jazz. There was a serene beauty to the music that drew me in and I was even more impressed when I heard Kind of Blue (of course). I'm still a huge Davis fan and have many of his records. I watched the Ken Burns jazz documentary, which isn't perfect but gave me a good overview of the different era and major artists in jazz.
     
    Last edited: Jan 7, 2017
  3. Merrick

    Merrick A lidless ear

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    Oh and the album that turned me on to hip hop was Public Enemy's Fear of a Black Planet, with a dose of help from Paul's Boutique.
     
  4. xLn

    xLn Acquaintance

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    bright eyes - fevers and mirrors

    pretty sure it was recorded in a basement bathroom and is still one of the most raw and honest albums ive ever heard
     

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