Music of Me

This is partly inspired by a book by Nick Hornby called Songbook, partly by another of his books called High Fidelity, and mostly by my sudden need to write down crap about myself that I feel is somewhat relevent and/or important. My posts for a while will be a list of the ten most important albums in my life. They are listed chronologically in order of when I first listened to them. I guess this is my first attempt at some sort of autobiographical exploration...that said, I think I'll do this in installments, one or two a day, or month. More excuses to post that way. By no means am I making a claim that these albums should mean anything to anyone else, but if they do, well I'll probably never hear about it because no one will read this.

Monday, February 12, 2007

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.

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