Friday Five
Jan. 15th, 2010 03:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
janradderTop 5 Albums I Love But Used to Hate
There are certain records that seem almost like wine or whisky -- the first time you hear them there's something off putting about them. They grate, they annoy, they make you hate the artist who recorded them -- they can even make you hate the person who introduced you to the record in the first place, at least while the damn thing is playing. Put them away, though, and let them age, then bring them back out a few years later (hell, maybe even fifteen or twenty years later) and suddenly this album that you couldn't bear listening to is pure genius and you wonder what it was that made you hate it so all those years back. Here's my list of my favorite of those albums:
1. Public Image, Ltd. Second Edition
I wish I could say that I'd been a cool high school kid who went around listening to Second Edition while everyone else bopped their heads to Huey Lewis, but I can't. I'd listened to PiL before -- they were my favorite band, in fact. I'd even loved their supposedly unlistenable Flowers of Romance. So when I got this double LP I was nearly beside myself in anticipation with the aural delights I was about to hear. Instead, what I heard was dull, repetitive bass lines, guitar parts that seemed to veer off on tangents that shouldn't be there, and the horrible caterwauling of John Lydon. I listened to it a few times then stuck it in my record collection where it sat untouched for years. Then, a couple years back, I pulled it out again, just to see if it really was as god-awful as I'd remembered, and a funny thing happened -- the dull, plodding bass became a thundering foundation upon which the guitar was free to clash and twist or shimmer upon, while the whiny drone of John Lydon became a voice in the darkness guiding you through shadows into corners and closed doors. And when that happened, this record didn't leave my turntable for a month.
2. Hüsker Dü, Land Speed Record
Again, a band I loved. My mom gave this record to me for Christmas when I was sixteen or seventeen, and my best friend was jealous when she did because we'd both heard how fantastic is was. Then I played it. And, dear god. It was two long songs, one on each side. I couldn't understand a word anyone was saying. I couldn't hear notes. Or a rhythm. Or anything, really, except a buzzing guitar and crashing drums that seemed to have nothing to do with the music being played. I put the record on a tape with a bunch of other records and I stuck the tape in the car. Almost each time I played the tape and it got to Land Speed Record, I'd fast-forward past it (unless I was driving through my hometown of Cheshire and I'd roll down the windows of my Chevette and crank it as loud as it would go just to annoy anyone nearby). But then I started to make out the notes, and the rhythms, and the harmonies, and though I still couldn't understand much of what the band was saying it didn't matter because I was hooked. I don't know if I'd say it was Blue Öyster Cult on amphetamine like Mike Watt has described it, but it really doesn't matter because it's one of the few hardcore records I can put on today and still enjoy.
3. The Modern Lovers, The Modern Lovers
In college I had a roommate from the Boston area who was obsessed with Jonathan Richman. Lord knows why, because all I heard was a guy who couldn't sing and who could barely play guitar. My roommate would play "I'm Straight" and I'd bury my head under a pillow wondering if this was some sort of torture he'd devised to get revenge on me for asking him to wash his dishes. Several years later, I heard Jonathan on the radio. I don't know if it was because I was feeling homesick for New England, or if it was something else, but there was something in the sincerity of Jonathan's ineptness that struck a chord with me. I wanted to cruise past the Stop & Shop with my radio on and declare in a nasally voice that I'm not stoned like Hippy Johnny. I wanted to be dignified and old and walk past the Fenway wishing for a girlfren. Jonathan had finally won me over.
4. Talking Heads, More Songs About Buildings and Food
I was fifteen and working as an assistant editor on Psychos in Love when Gorman, the director of the film, played this record for me. All summer long, he and my friend Matt and I had been exchanging records. Sometimes (like us with Hüsker Dü and he with the Jam) there was success. Other times, like with this god-awful record, there was not. Why did I hate this record? Well, part of it was that it was a dance record, and being a hardcore punk rocker in 1986, for me, meant thinking that anything even remotely danceable was complete and utter crap. But there was something more that I couldn't quite put a finger on. I tried listening to this one many years later when I picked it up at a used record store, and it still did nothing for me. Then I bought a new record cleaner and started slowly but methodically going through my collection with it. When I got to MSABAF, I put it on, and was shocked when instead of a clinically cold guitars like I'd remembered, I heard a skiffling drum and riffing guitar that stuttered along beneath David Byrne's spasmodic voice. I felt something grab at my chest and pull me and implore me to jerk and gyrate and hop to this beat. And then, before I knew it, I was.
5. Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band, Trout Mask Replica
Trout Mask Replica is notorious for driving it's listeners away, and I knew this going in. I'd already listened to a few other Beefheart records and I thought I knew what I was getting into, but when I put the needle to the vinyl, there was nothing that could have prepared me for what I heard. The music wasn't just oddly rhythmic, it was arrhythmic. Not one instrument or voice seemed to have any clue as to what the other instruments or voices were playing, and Captain Beefheart himself would start and stop and restart lyrics in mid-sentence and song because he hadn't gotten it quite right at first. In between songs were these weird utterances about the mascara snake. The record was as appealing as the dead carp Don Van Vliet wore on the cover. The record was wrong. Horribly, horribly wrong. But I couldn't give up on it because I'd read too many praises of it, and I was sure there must be something I was missing. I pulled it out again on a bright winter afternoon and slapped it on the turntable. Then I lay on the couch and listened to it as it played, trying to let go my preconceptions of what a record or a song should be. And as I did, I realized I'd been wrong about the record's arrhythmic quality. It wasn't that there was no rhythm -- it was just that the rhythm was quite unlike anything I'd heard before or was used to. And with that the rest of the album started to fall into place, and even if it didn't make sense in a traditional sense of the word, it made sense in its own logic. If that makes any sense.
There are certain records that seem almost like wine or whisky -- the first time you hear them there's something off putting about them. They grate, they annoy, they make you hate the artist who recorded them -- they can even make you hate the person who introduced you to the record in the first place, at least while the damn thing is playing. Put them away, though, and let them age, then bring them back out a few years later (hell, maybe even fifteen or twenty years later) and suddenly this album that you couldn't bear listening to is pure genius and you wonder what it was that made you hate it so all those years back. Here's my list of my favorite of those albums:
1. Public Image, Ltd. Second Edition
I wish I could say that I'd been a cool high school kid who went around listening to Second Edition while everyone else bopped their heads to Huey Lewis, but I can't. I'd listened to PiL before -- they were my favorite band, in fact. I'd even loved their supposedly unlistenable Flowers of Romance. So when I got this double LP I was nearly beside myself in anticipation with the aural delights I was about to hear. Instead, what I heard was dull, repetitive bass lines, guitar parts that seemed to veer off on tangents that shouldn't be there, and the horrible caterwauling of John Lydon. I listened to it a few times then stuck it in my record collection where it sat untouched for years. Then, a couple years back, I pulled it out again, just to see if it really was as god-awful as I'd remembered, and a funny thing happened -- the dull, plodding bass became a thundering foundation upon which the guitar was free to clash and twist or shimmer upon, while the whiny drone of John Lydon became a voice in the darkness guiding you through shadows into corners and closed doors. And when that happened, this record didn't leave my turntable for a month.
2. Hüsker Dü, Land Speed Record
Again, a band I loved. My mom gave this record to me for Christmas when I was sixteen or seventeen, and my best friend was jealous when she did because we'd both heard how fantastic is was. Then I played it. And, dear god. It was two long songs, one on each side. I couldn't understand a word anyone was saying. I couldn't hear notes. Or a rhythm. Or anything, really, except a buzzing guitar and crashing drums that seemed to have nothing to do with the music being played. I put the record on a tape with a bunch of other records and I stuck the tape in the car. Almost each time I played the tape and it got to Land Speed Record, I'd fast-forward past it (unless I was driving through my hometown of Cheshire and I'd roll down the windows of my Chevette and crank it as loud as it would go just to annoy anyone nearby). But then I started to make out the notes, and the rhythms, and the harmonies, and though I still couldn't understand much of what the band was saying it didn't matter because I was hooked. I don't know if I'd say it was Blue Öyster Cult on amphetamine like Mike Watt has described it, but it really doesn't matter because it's one of the few hardcore records I can put on today and still enjoy.
3. The Modern Lovers, The Modern Lovers
In college I had a roommate from the Boston area who was obsessed with Jonathan Richman. Lord knows why, because all I heard was a guy who couldn't sing and who could barely play guitar. My roommate would play "I'm Straight" and I'd bury my head under a pillow wondering if this was some sort of torture he'd devised to get revenge on me for asking him to wash his dishes. Several years later, I heard Jonathan on the radio. I don't know if it was because I was feeling homesick for New England, or if it was something else, but there was something in the sincerity of Jonathan's ineptness that struck a chord with me. I wanted to cruise past the Stop & Shop with my radio on and declare in a nasally voice that I'm not stoned like Hippy Johnny. I wanted to be dignified and old and walk past the Fenway wishing for a girlfren. Jonathan had finally won me over.
4. Talking Heads, More Songs About Buildings and Food
I was fifteen and working as an assistant editor on Psychos in Love when Gorman, the director of the film, played this record for me. All summer long, he and my friend Matt and I had been exchanging records. Sometimes (like us with Hüsker Dü and he with the Jam) there was success. Other times, like with this god-awful record, there was not. Why did I hate this record? Well, part of it was that it was a dance record, and being a hardcore punk rocker in 1986, for me, meant thinking that anything even remotely danceable was complete and utter crap. But there was something more that I couldn't quite put a finger on. I tried listening to this one many years later when I picked it up at a used record store, and it still did nothing for me. Then I bought a new record cleaner and started slowly but methodically going through my collection with it. When I got to MSABAF, I put it on, and was shocked when instead of a clinically cold guitars like I'd remembered, I heard a skiffling drum and riffing guitar that stuttered along beneath David Byrne's spasmodic voice. I felt something grab at my chest and pull me and implore me to jerk and gyrate and hop to this beat. And then, before I knew it, I was.
5. Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band, Trout Mask Replica
Trout Mask Replica is notorious for driving it's listeners away, and I knew this going in. I'd already listened to a few other Beefheart records and I thought I knew what I was getting into, but when I put the needle to the vinyl, there was nothing that could have prepared me for what I heard. The music wasn't just oddly rhythmic, it was arrhythmic. Not one instrument or voice seemed to have any clue as to what the other instruments or voices were playing, and Captain Beefheart himself would start and stop and restart lyrics in mid-sentence and song because he hadn't gotten it quite right at first. In between songs were these weird utterances about the mascara snake. The record was as appealing as the dead carp Don Van Vliet wore on the cover. The record was wrong. Horribly, horribly wrong. But I couldn't give up on it because I'd read too many praises of it, and I was sure there must be something I was missing. I pulled it out again on a bright winter afternoon and slapped it on the turntable. Then I lay on the couch and listened to it as it played, trying to let go my preconceptions of what a record or a song should be. And as I did, I realized I'd been wrong about the record's arrhythmic quality. It wasn't that there was no rhythm -- it was just that the rhythm was quite unlike anything I'd heard before or was used to. And with that the rest of the album started to fall into place, and even if it didn't make sense in a traditional sense of the word, it made sense in its own logic. If that makes any sense.
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no subject
Date: 2010-01-16 11:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-17 12:53 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-17 02:07 am (UTC)Actually, it was the T.Heads album after that (Fear of Music) that helped me break my Prog-Rock addiction in the early 1980's, then I went backwards to the first two. Then "Remain In Light" came out and my world went wowee!
no subject
Date: 2010-01-17 02:57 am (UTC)I'm always shocked when I remember that Remain in Light came out in 1980, because it doesn't sound like anything else from that year at all (at least not that I've heard). That was another album that took a while for me to like.
music
Date: 2010-01-27 02:26 am (UTC)One odd moment: I had never cared for Tom Petty's music, but when he played the Superbowl halftime show, I found myself loving every single song. And the songs seemed to have a special meaning in the context of Patriots vs. Giants (Giants: I Won't Back Down. Patriots: Free Falling).
-Ben.
Re: music
Date: 2010-01-27 10:44 pm (UTC)Yeah, I find now that I'm older I'm willing to give a lot of music more of a chance than I did when I was in high school. Like Prince, for instance (who I liked before I got into punk but automatically had to hate after because you could dance to his music). I still don't like much Tom Petty, though. I like some of his Byrds-ian songs, but mostly I could do without him.