15 Albums That Changed My Life

Dedicated to Billy Biondi:

I elect for my 15 Albums the following;

1) Dinah Shore, "Buttons & Bows"
I have very fond memories of listening to this album in the office/den of our home in Edison, NJ while standing on my head. A seminal moment when I discovered I was an unconventional consumer of popular culture.

2) Original Cast Album, "Jamaica"
Harry Belafonte, Lena Horne & calypso music!! Few songs have reverberated with me over the years as "Push de Button" sung by a young vibrant Lena Horne.

3) Elton John, "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road"
I had my first (drunken) sexual encounter to this album with my best friend growing up, Ira. Life would never be the same and neither would that album. Ah sweet memories!

4) Dr. Buzzard's Original Savannah Band, "Dr. Buzzard's Original Savannah Band"
It's high school. All the anxiety, all the peer pressure. In a small private school filled with deadheads, potheads and head bangers I discovered that I was in Philadelphia right at the height of disco and TSOP. I would bring this album to school and have impromptu dance parties at lunch.
Also help teach me the art of a good hook.
Some of the best times of my life!

5) David Bowie, "Young Americans"
The Jean Genie comes to Philly and does Frank Sinatra! A great band backs up one of the most original artists in popular music. Great lyrics, great hooks and David Sanborn on sax!!

6) Talking Heads "Talking Heads '77"
Introduced to me on my first day freshman year in my college dorm by the woman who would go on to be my best friend in the entire world, Lydia. It's jerky spastic rhythms and sing-song lyrics appealed to everything quirky and queer in me. "There's really no hurry, I'll eat in a while" a bit too Anglo-protestant for this Jew ("We're Jews, we eat!) but enlightening!

7) Patti Smith, "Horses"
No one said rebellion at that time like Patti. The mystical crossed with the perverse. And live was always the best; would she fall off the stage again? Throw up all over?
My uniform for several years was the cover of this album: white shirt, suspenders and a military jacket over the shoulder.
Nobody mixed the energy of Rock n Roll with ecstatic poetry like Patti! As fresh today as it was back then.

8) Ornette Coleman, "At the Golden Circle Stockholm Vol 1"
A jazz original that appealed to me with its oddball rhythmic changes and simple melodies. I would play the "European Echoes" cut over and over. Foreshadowed a lot of downtown music to come.

9) John Coltrane, "My Favorite Things"
Another jazz original doing what I loved so much in my life; show tunes!! As a musician and an artist it is great to hear another extremely talented artist take something familiar and make you hear it again in a whole new way. A desert island album for sure.

10) Phillip Glass/Robert Wilson, "Einstein on the Beach"
Who ever thought an opera about nothing could be so fascinating. And sing-able. A quotable!! An early Glass masterpiece helped by the masterful staging of Wilson.
"I was in this prematurely air-conditioned supermarket and there were all these aisles and there were these bathing caps that you could buy that were red and yellow and blue and I wasn't tempted to buy one but I was reminded that I had been avoiding the beach."
Everyone hit the beach!!!!!

11) Laurie Anderson, “United States Parts I-IV”
I couldn't let this list go by without this seminal work by America's foremost artist/musician. A four disc compilation recorded live at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. It documents one of the most amazing performance works I had the privilege to attend. With her droll wit, her onstage techno-wizardry and her keen eye for observation, it still amazes and moves me today.

12) Steve Reich/The Kronos Quartet, "Different Trains"
Another moving masterwork from one of the fathers of Minimalism. Reich demonstrates his uncanny ability, like Janacek, to use the cadence of ordinary speech to drive the music behind it. Partially auto-biographical, here the artist ponders what trains he might have been riding in the 40's if he had been in Europe and not America at that time. Haunting, powerful, uplifing.

13) Brian Eno, "Music for Airports"
Probably Eno's initial Ambient record, this music has an austere Feldman-like openness that made one rethink the concept of Muzak. This album helped me drift off to sleep after many a wild night.

14) Henryk Gorecki, Symphony #3 (Sorrowful Songs)"
I am referring to the London Sinfonietta and Dawn Upshaw version. Of the eastern European "mystic" composer to emerge towards the end of the 20th century, Gorecki seems to have found his way out of the high-brow European avant-garde and actually created beautiful music you want to hear. Of course the lovely clarion tones of the soprano Dawn Upshaw don't hurt this masterwork of modern music. A guaranteed tear-jerker.

15) Gavin Bryars, ""The Sinking of the Titanic"
There had to be a Bryars piece on my list but which one? "Jesus Blood never failed me Yet" with its neo-minimal use of taped voice, musical ensemble and singer (Tom Waits!!)? "A Man in a Room, Gambling" the series of short works he did for BBC Radio which has the audio commentary teaching the listener how to do card tricks and to cheat at the card table, set to short sharp string accompaniment? But after much deliberation I had to choose "Titanic". From the opening crash in the bass, this piece has a haunted, eerie watery quality that is a marvel to hear. Creating a aural sensation of drifting through water, we catch bits of words, tunes (Amazing Grace, played by a string quartet as the ship sank), and noise that add up to one of the most intense, interesting and satisfying audio experiences I have ever had.
Note: not to be played late at night with strangers in the house!!