This is a little meme that was going around a year ago and I thought it was worth reprinting here for posterity’s sake. Not that I’m that important that my tastes need to be committed to the long term, but since I do post a lot of little podcasts and I write music articles that appear on Reverse Direction, I at least thought it was worth putting down a concise history of my musical trajectory, to sort of explain where this all came from. So, it’s an old list, but still prudent – and if I could add anymore, I don’t know what that would be. Currently I am in love with much Scandinavian music, particularly the sounds of Iceland, but I can’t point to one record that opened me up to that – and in some ways, the last record mentioned on this list opened up the road that eventually lead there anyhow.

Squeeze – Sweets from a Stranger
This is an odd one, because I acknowledge that this isn’t the greatest album – I like it, but I don’t love it and I think most people have that attitude. It’s more important for what it lead me to – Elvis Costello, Nick Lowe, Jools Holland, The Pretenders, Dave Edmunds, Carlene Carter and loads of others that were really important to me when I was younger and some who still are. What it wrought is bigger than the album itself.

Madness – self titled American debut
This is the record that had “Our House” on it. It is also the record that introduced me to Madness and ska in general. I ate this up and wanted more, went out and found imports of “The Rise and Fall” – which makes up the majority of this record – and “Complete Madness” – a best of that filled in the early gaps for me. I’ve listened to and loved a lot of ska in my time, but Madness will not only always be my favorite ska band, but one of my favorite bands ever.

Randy Newman – Trouble in Paradise
The seed had been planted with “Short People” when I was a kid – the first major hit to employ sarcasm in such a sophisticated way, even as a kid it astounded me that such a thing existed – I largely picked this album in high school up because of “I Love LA,” a song I found very funny and in all the right ways. Thankfully, I was prepared for what followed on the album, a string of dark, funny, and honest satires. I also remember this was the point when I started realizing that Rolling Stone was lame, because they made fun of Randy Newman for using Toto on the album.

Various Artists – IRS Greatest Hits Vol 2 and 3
This was a budget, 2 LP deal that I picked up because Squeeze was on it, but it ended up opening up worlds for me that I haven’t left. It’s because of this album that I first heard The Cramps, The Damned, Oingo Boingo, Jools Holland and many others. This may well be the most pivotal album of my high school years.

Sex Pistols – Great Rock and Roll Swindle
I did not understand punk until I was 18, really truly, until my roommate in college played me this album and I fell in love with the Sex Pistols, Macolm McLaren, Tenpole Tudor, and the whole damn idea. It was “Friggin in the Riggin” that sold me. Suddenly, I understood the humor of all those Brit punk bands instead of just the anger. I was at a creative point where my prime aim was to offend – lame, lame, lame, but a lot of people go through that – and this was the perfect aural catalyst. What I couldn’t have expected is that I’d still love the album – and The Sex Pistols – 25 years later.

The Residents – Third Reich and Roll
I first encountered The Residents on Night Flight in high school, but I missed the announcer say their names – I just heard words like “the mysterious band from San Francisco whose identity no one knows” and then watched the very strange video from this album with them wearing newspaper costumes and shooting lasers and showing dancing meat and swastikas and Adolf Hitler. About a half a year later, they finally repeated it and I caught the name. The first record I got was The Commercial Album, but it’s this one, the second, that I loved. It was the first piece of unadulterated experimental, weird, almost unlistenable craziness that I fell in love for – and it’s largely the reason that Tom Waits’ Swordfishtrombone isn’t on this list! The Residents lead directly to my love of that album. The Residents showed me the ways you can turn music and image inside and out.

Art of Noise – Into Battle with
These guys made me love synth music. Whereas at the time you could either find boppy/dancey synth music or experimental/intense synth music, the Art of Noise was somewhere in between. Abstract but happy, pop snippets thrown into experimental structures. And unlike so many synth artists, they understood how to configure the synth – and sampled (VERY early for pop music) sounds – rather than just work with what they could afford.

Frank Sinatra and Count Basie – It Might As Well Be Swing
I was raised on Sinatra and already loved him, but this was my first adult purchase. I found it for 25 cents at Sounds in NYC and it seem ridiculous not to buy it. When doing the typical boy music posturing, this was not something I brought out, but in private, I would blast “Fly Me to the Moon” and “More” and “The Best is Yet to Come” and even “Hello Dolly.” I could not get this music out of my heart or brain. At a certain point, a few years later, I picked up copies of “Songs for Swingin’ Lovers” and “This is Sinatra” and it was complete. I think I now own everything Sinatra ever recorded, his work has had a major impact on my life and creativity.

Malcolm McLaren – Duck Rock
I have always thought this to be one of the stellar albums of the 80s, groundbreaking and visionary in ways that weren’t even apparent at the time. It opened me up to foreign music, sampling, dance music, rap, audio collage, percussion-driven sounds, and so much more.

Lionel Hampton – Hamp’s Big Band
One of the best record deals ever – 49 cents from a record store in Rochester. I have no idea why I bought it, but this really opened up jazz for me. I didn’t even know who Lionel Hampton was at the time. It just looked cool and it turned out it was cool – Hamp’s intricate and lively vibe progressions over a raucous big band sound.

Sylvie Vartan – Twiste et Chante
Another 50 center that I picked up on a lark – Sylvie was so cool and cute and she did a Beatles cover. How could I not? What happened, though, was that it tipped me off to the beauty of French pop, which as time went along, became one of my most favorite genres and opened the doors for so many favorites – Serge Gainsbourg, Brigitte Bardot, France Gall, Francoise Hardy, Dalida, Gilbert Becaud, and on and on.

They Might Be Giants – 1st album
I had called Dial-A-Song a few times and enjoyed what I heard, but it was “Don’t Let’s Stop” being played on WLIR constantly in the winter/spring of 1987 that made me buy the album. This was a year before the song hit MTV. The wordplay in the song floored me. Someone had actually not only spent time writing lyrics, but playful lyrics that masked something far darker and deeper. I remember the exact moment I bought this. Jana and I had just had lunch on Easter near the World Trade Center with her older brother, who was visiting NYC with some friends. I told her that I had decided that I really needed to buy this. As it turns out, I don’t think a band has had a more profound and complete effect on my life than TMBG.

Desperate Rock and Roll Vol 1
Another album that opened floodgates to something – this time being music from the 50s and 60s. But not just Elvis and Jerry Lee oldies, but an entire world that is hidden to us by the big business of music nostalgia. This collection – a later volume of which would feature Jana’s dad’s band – brought together obscure regional rock and r&b singles. Back then, national hits shared the charts with regional hits and the radio waves were ripe with both. By the 70s, after a long descent, that dynamic was over. All the things I had heard about the 50s explosion of youth and had never actually heard in the music, I heard it here – raw, DIY passion that is a direct line to the 70s punks, the belief that anyone can make a song. Changed my life.

Thelonious Monk – Straight No Chaser
This was the second major salvo in jazz for me – bought probably a good decade after Hamp. We had seen the movie “Straight No Chaser” and I was mesmerized by Monk and his music and wanted to know more. This is not the soundtrack, but the original album. It challenged my ideas of what exactly a tune was, with Monk playing musical scientist testing out variations on the same unusual notes that he chose to play.

Everything’s Illuminated soundtrack
This is the only recent album I stuck on here. That’s because this introduced me to the Eastern European sounds that are currently such a focal point of my taste. I guess I would have discovered some of them without encountering this album first, but this is the one that really set me in motion and I haven’t stopped my interest there yet.