Turn Me On I'm a Radiohead

10. O.K. Computer - Radiohead
Here I am at the end of this list, and I think that it may be safe to say that I'm an acoustic kind of guy. In fact, I may never have broken out of that niche if it hadn't been for a fellow barista I worked with at a coffee shop in Tucson. I don't even recall the guy's name now; turnover was a bit high at that job, poor management, crappy hours, etc., but the coffee was awesome. Anyhow, it was summer in the desert and I was working weekends at the coffee shop and teaching a Rock and Roll history class at the university during the week. I got talking with this dude, Chad?, Chip?, Ryan?...?, and he asked me what I thought about Radiohead. This is the point at which the Rock and Roll teacher (namely, me) realized that he was terribly out of touch with the here and now. "Radiohead? Yeah, they're great...I don't really know their stuff though." In fact, I hadn't even heard a Radiohead album and was only familiar with a handfull of singles. So, I asked him what his favorite Radiohead album was and he replied, "O.K. Computer." Once again, my life changed.
The thing is, I had friends in college that raved about Radiohead and scoffed when I acted aloof. But at that time I was perfectly content in my little Dave Matthews colored world and had no interest in a band that seemed so, well...produced. And the other thing is, I'm often an idiot about these things, thinking that if it was such great music, I surely would be familiar with it, rock snob that I was. Truth be told, I was a sham of a rock snob before I finally listened to O.K. Computer. It was frightening. From start to finish, it was perfect and complex and beautiful, and it had been out there for nearly a decade before I listened to it. So there I was, faced with a classroom full of university students who no doubt would make me for the square I was because of my prevailing ingnorance in all things Rock. That's a little drastic I suppose, but I certainly felt that way. O.K. Computer was genius, a real album made by real musicians. My qualms about Radiohead being too produced fell away and I embraced all the electronic wonders they had to offer.
So, my musical journey to the here and now being complete, I find that I still have much to say. Especially about the years since O.K. Computer and Radiohead woke me up from my Rock Snob Dream and led me to Rock Snob Reality. What I know now is that there is far more excellent music out there than I'll ever have the time or resources for. Nevermind what everyone says I should listen to...I'll just keep stumbling upon gems here and there, whether I'm searching for them or not (example: just in the last two weeks I've discovered Beck's Sea Change and a brand new album called The Bird and the Bee, both of which have incredibly lavish production and infectious melodic content; I could just sit and listen for hours and hours...). So stay tuned, the list may be done, but as Karen Carpenter so aptly sang, we've only just begun.

Righteous Babe

9. Ani Difranco - Revelling:Reckoning
I fell in love with Lisa Loeb about halfway through high school. I saw her play on Austin City Limits, and was absolutely enamored. In fact, I taped the show and watched it from time to time (this is something I did often, since we didn't have cable; PBS has some great stuff every now and then). How many female musicians did I admire before Lisa Loeb? Does Debbie Gibson count? I guess the point is that my adolescent male brain had been so focused on the offensively loud and unabashedly shallow stuff, I totally overlooked everything else. That's sort of a cop out. The real reason I liked Lisa Loeb had everything to do with how cute she was but also had everything to do with her lyrics, voice, guitar playing, all of it. But my eyes had been opened nonetheless, to the beauty and emotion and anger and depth that came along with a female point-of-view.
PBS was also the vehicle for my intro to Ani Difranco. I saw her play on a late-night show called Sessions at West 54th(I believe I also watched Beck do a mindboggling solo show on this same program when he released O Delay, I would do anything to track down those performances on DVD). Admittedly, I didn't listen to many of Ani's lyrics or really pay attention to much of anything other than her right hand. She had her fingers all taped up and was playing the hell out an acoustic guitar that was nearly as big as her. I had never seen anyone play a guitar with such force and still create intricate lines and hooks that were discernible from the percussion of the strumming. She was simply amazing.
During my freshman year in college, a girl that lived in my dorm asked me to play the guitar for her in an Ani Difranco song at a talent show on campus. By that time, I was more familiar with Ani's credo of girl power...so I agreed to play for her and enjoyed every minute of it, but I felt a bit like an impostor. In effect, the whole experience turned me way off to Ani for good (I assumed).
Once again, everything changed. That phone call in Ellensburg (see Ryan Adams post) turned into a bit of a recurring thing, and eventually included seven hour drives back and forth to the Boise area. Of course, the person on the other end of the phone happened to like Ani Difranco; in fact, Ani was her favorite. Needless to say, it didn't take too long for me to come around (love does that to you), but it was more than just tolerance in the face of infatuation. In hindsight, Ani was a natural match for me. She played acoustic guitar, wrote her own stuff (prolifically), used elements of jazz, was dynamic on her own or with a band, and she supplied not only that unique female perspective but also a DIY attitude about all things political (without a hint of apology). All of these elements are present on Revelling: Reckoning. But it wasn't instant. It took me a couple of years to fully come to appreciate that album. Then, we went to see her in concert and I was so blown away that my mind was changed for good. Every negative preconception I'd had about Ani was wrong and every reservation I'd felt in regard to her lyric subject matter was based on stereotypes I no longer held onto.
Simply put, Ani Difranco is one of the best songwriters I've ever listened to and her music has affected me on every level. I often used her songs when teaching the Rock 'n' Roll History class at University of Arizona for a singer/songwriter project. I used to wish that I could play guitar and write lyrics like Dave Matthews; now I wish I had just the tiniest bit of Ani's talent, that I could write and play with that kind of substance and passion.

The Depths of Ellensburg

8. Ryan Adams - Heartbreaker
I tried living alone once, in a town where I knew no one, and had three months of hot, dry, windy summer to kill. Actually, I was supposed to be working, but in a college town that is a quarter of its normal size when the university is out of session, jobs are not too forthcoming. Well, I spent my days in a tiny studio apartment, waiting for the phone to ring and trying not to think about what I might have left behind in Idaho. Depressing, eh. A bit I suppose, but I had my guitar, a pile of books to read, and a very cool CD store a few blocks away called Rodeo Records. Ellensburg, Washington is just a short, beautiful drive over the Cascades from Seattle, but it felt like nowhere that summer. A few weeks before I was to start graduate school, I wandered in to Rodeo Records and bought two albums on a whim: Ryan Adams' Heartbreaker and Laura Veirs' The Triumphs and Travails of Orphan Mae. While Laura Veirs has had more staying power with me, it was Heartbreaker that made all of the drudgery of that summer worth something.
The first time I listened to Heartbreaker, I got so emotional that I drank all of the beer in my apartment and had to climb the hill up to the store for more. It was as if Ryan Adams had peered into my soul and wrote heartachingly poignant poetry about what he saw. Not the way of it I guess, but it was so refreshing to know that someone else was fighting the same demons that I was. He had the written the words I had been unsuccessfully trying to express for years. "Come Pick Me Up" quickly worked its way on to my "all-time best lyrics" list (a project for later). It reminded me of a few songs I had written a couple of years back, only about a million times better. It was all too much. Every night for a week, I sat at my kitchen table with Heartbreaker on repeat and stared out window. Then, the phone did ring. And everything changed in a flash. But that is a story just for me and the person who was on the other end of the line.
I guess that Heartbreaker is one of those albums that can take me back to a very precise moment in time, to a very specific set of emotions. And sometimes I need to recall that dreariness, to remind myself of how incredible it felt when it all melted away.

Jazz Revisited

7. Kurt Elling - The Messenger
In the Coltrane post, I made mention of my penchant for vocal jazz. Soon after my discovery of Blue Train, I began listening to Mark Murphy and Chet Baker in earnest and trying desperately to improve my vocal chops. I could hardly have chosen two more disparate vocalists had I searched all of Jazzdom. For a while, I thought I was getting somewhere. I took Mark Murphy's unconventional and unabashedly daring arrangements and improvisations to heart, pushing myself to the edge of my comfort zone. I attempted to fill my voice with melancholy and dreams lost in booze and smoky haze like Chet Baker. All of this was moderately successful for me. Then, when I was a senior in college and at the very top of my game, I heard Kurt Elling.
A lot of people have recorded "Nature Boy," just go to AMG and take a look. But do yourself a favor and check out Elling's version. The important thing here is that Elling pays homage to the definitive version of the tune (Nat King Cole's) in his intro, and then lets his rhythm section cook over the changes and transform it into something fresh. What really blew me away was the scat solo in the improv section. The first time I listened to The Messenger, I was in my car driving home; I had to pull over and just sit and listen. I was blessed with the opportunity to see the Kurt Elling Quartet in Seattle a few years back. His version of "Tanya Jean" with the vocalise of Dexter Gordon's sax solo, my favorite, was absolutely mesmerizing. Hero worship aside, I think what struck me most about Elling on The Messenger was his connection to the rhythm section. He bridges the gap that often exists between singers and instrumentalists, providing room for everyone to shine. Moreover, he proves that you can be progressive as a jazz vocalist and still be respectful of the idiom. And for me, Elling's mastery of the style and ingenuity in interpretation showed me that I was on the right track, but not nearly passionate enough.

Stripped Down

6. Dave Matthews & Tim Reynolds - Live at Luther College
Eric Clapton Unplugged was the first live concert album I purchased. In the months following my discovery of that album (it was Summer and I was 16), I learned how to play some basic blues on my guitar and failed miserably trying to play like Clapton. Nevertheless, I was entranced by the bare-bones acoustic nature of this album, especially on songs like Robert Johnson's "Malted Milk" and Big Bill Broonzy's "Hey Hey". My love for acoustic guitar was compounded by a few things: Nirvana's Unplugged album, fingerstyle guitarists like Billy McLaughlin, a new guitar for my high school graduation/18th birthday, and Dave Matthews. I was a DMB fan before the Dave and Tim album came out, but I was a disciple afterward. Although it is very hard for me to find fault with DMB, I have always found the jam band nature of some of their studio stuff and nearly all of their live albums to be a bit annoying. But when you take out the fiddle and sax and 89-piece drum set, the songs somehow get better. I mean, just listen to the Dave and Tim versions of "Crash Into Me", "Warehouse", or "What Would You Say?" next to any of their other incarnations, studio or live, and you'll hear what I'm saying. I spent my college years learning how to play nearly all of the songs on Live at Luther College, and many other DMB songs, with dreams of becoming the next Dave, the next acoustic troubadour in a world of hip-hop noise and bare-chested Latin crooners. Of course, none of that happened, but my guitar playing moved up a notch or two and my song-writing skills improved as well.

It has taken me months to put this post together, and I'm realizing that perhaps I burned out (figuratively) on Dave a while ago. I still love to play his songs on my guitar; then again, since finishing college I haven't really had the disposable time to learn new stuff. This album pushed me to become a better musician in a way that no other rock/pop recording ever has, but it was eclipsed and put out of mind by other albums and recordings and states of being. I'm sure I will come back to it at some point, but for now it's tucked away in a CD folder being quiet.

New Love

5. John Coltrane - Blue Train
I played guitar in my high school jazz band, and I was never really any good. Still, when I started college I tried out for and played in a couple jazz ensembles. One of my directors prompted me to sing a bit with the vocal jazz group and I quickly discovered that I was much better at singing jazz than I was at trying to comp and solo on my guitar. As a singer I could emulate jazz artists much easier than I ever could on guitar. That said, most of my knowledge of jazz was still rooted in the cheese-jazz that I played in high school. I wanted to embrace it, live it, breathe it, blah blah blah, but I needed a staring point. On a trip to Seattle to visit my sister, it was early Fall and rainy, I walked into a used CD shop on Capitol Hill and found the album that would spark a new love in my life.
At some point in the years leading up to college, I heard the title track from John Coltrane's Blue Train. I can't really recall if this is true, but I believe it was in one of the deleted scenes from the movie Singles. I certainly felt that the track had something to do with Seattle, and that it was necessary to purchase the album in Seattle and listen to it while the rain fell outside and I breathed in the steam of my americano from the Coffee Messiah. Blue Train is important to me in so many different ways, it's really difficult to describe. My favorite moment of the entire album is right after Coltrane begins his solo on the first track. Philly Joe Jones enters the tune with what have to be the wettest sounding cymbals I've ever heard. Those few bars did more to hook me on jazz than anything I listened to before or since; and every time I listen to Blue Train now, every one of my senses is transported back to Seattle and that rainy Fall day. Only a few albums have that kind of staying power for me. It led me to other jazz albums like Miles Davis' Kind of Blue and Lee Morgan's Sidewinder, and made me a smarter, more impassioned musician.

The Necessity

4. The Beatles - The Beatles
I discovered the Beatles in the summer following my senior year of high school. A week after graduation, I moved out of my parents' house in Rupert to a friend's house in Boise. I paid for my room by doing yardwork and painting. Needless to say, this afforded me plenty of time to listen to a myriad of Beatles albums that I found at the Library(!). Of course, I had heard plenty of Beatles songs before, but I had never really listened to a full Beatles album; there is a huge difference between hearing "Michelle" and hearing Rubber Soul. In essence, it was the Beatles' focus on the album as art that became so important to me. I could probably write a few volumes on the Beatles and my thoughts of their music at this point, but I'll keep it to just some simple comments on the one album that has become more important to me than any other.
The Beatles (the White Album) is not a historically acclaimed album like Sgt. Pepper or Abbey Road. In general, the White Album has a lot more acoustic, singer-songwriter type stuff on it, and that's why I was initially drawn to it. Tunes like "Blackbird" and "Mother Nature's Son" became inspirations for my own songs, none of which ever actually sounded like Beatles tunes really. I was stuck by how eclectic the album was, by the way in which the Beatles emulated and satired musical styles from the Beach Boys to Bob Dylan to Tin Pan Alley. The contrast between "Why Don't We Do it in the Road?" and "Goodnight" and "Piggies" is almost ridiculous. At any rate, the White Album more than piqued my interest in the Beatles and because of that, I spent the rest of that first summer away from Rupert and my family immersed in Beatles albums. So it was John, Paul, George, and Ringo that ushered me into my freshman year of college, not a moment too late.

Pure Coincidence

3. Throwing Copper - LIVE
I discovered Live on the b-side of a mix tape that a friend made for me. I forget what was on the a-side, but I do remember being very fustrated that I had to rewind the tape everythime that I got to the end of side b, that and the album cut off right after "Waitress". Live was important because I could play a lot of their stuff on my acoustic and could sing it without shredding my voice. Moreover, they were the first band that I saw in concert, and they put on an amazing show. My best friend and I used to sit in the dark and listen to "Dam at Otter Creek" as loud as possible so we could relive the opening moments of that concert; I still do it sometimes. I guess that more than anything, Live made rock a tangible thing for me, something that was more than recorded sounds and moving images. Across the years since that first concert, I've seen maybe 6 other rock concerts (not many bands toured through or even close to southern Idaho, and when I got to college, well...I was broke), and dozens of other types of concerts from jazz to children's choirs. Some of these performances have mesmerized and inspired me in the way Live did. But it's the link between my real life expericence with Live and the unchanging album that makes Throwing Copper so important.