Quodlibets

"Out of Time" "Automatic for the People" and "Monster" -- REM

Ah yes, the classic early 90's R.E.M. trilogy.  Whether or not you personally believe all three albums work well together as a set of emotions (happiness, sadness, and anger respectively), these albums were incredibly popular at the time, and possibly still are.  "Automatic for the People" would most likely go on my list of top ten albums of all time; it's an album I still listen to with some frequency, and one that never, ever gets old.  "Sweetness Follows" is perhaps also in my top 10 or 20 songs, and I feel emotionally attached to it.

Chronologically, I'm quite certain that "Out of Time" was in our house soon after its release, whether on the strength of the singles ("Losing My Religion" is also still an incredible, wonderful song.) or not, I couldn't say.  I also don't remember having any other R.E.M. albums around, so again, I can't say why my dad brought "Out of Time" home.  I do remember quite clearly listening to "Shiny Happy People" before we moved out of the first house, which happened late in seventh grade.  The other albums must've also come home right around the times of their release, and I'm fairly certain "Monster" was the kind of album I prioritized so much that I got it either on the day of release, or the week of. 

R.E.M. was my first concert, and it was the "Monster" tour that I saw.  I remember very clearly every bit of that show--from Michael Stipe's lyric sheets to the wonderment of R.E.M. songs like "Fall on Me" that I didn't know.  After the concert, I believe that I systematically acquired every single R.E.M. album, starting at Murmur and moving forward.  And I really still think that but for a few clunkers (I don't love "Reckoning", their sophomore effort), the band has put out a remarkable number of insanely good albums.  And while I put "Automatic for the People" in my top 10, I don't necessarily always say that it's my favorite R.E.M. album.  Strange, eh?  But the emotional attachment to AftP is too great to chuck it in favor of "Life's Rich Pageant" or "Green" or "Document".  But those R.E.M. albums only entered my collection due to the other three, and the love of the other three that led me to see R.E.M. in concert.

And I don't think it's only the music that's important to me.  I can't remember a time when I wasn't fascinated by Michael Stipe, and the things he represented.  I loved (and still love) his propensity for gender fuck.  I probably love eyeliner on men so much because Michael Stipe used to wear it and oh man, used to look beautiful in it.  Also, my Michael Stipe never had hair.  He just had the beautiful shaved head, and his androgyny (which includes the eyeliner) always appealed to me.  I've always thought Michael Stipe was sexy, both for his looks and his attitude.  And his lyrics.  They can be nonsensical, but I've found things in them.  He isn't conventional, that's for sure, and I think I'm drawn to that in both men and women.  I'm not sure if that's how I felt as a sophomore in high school (when I saw that first R.E.M. show), because I'm not sure I was that conscious of such things, but I do know that I did always find him devilishly attractive.  It's very hard to say where one part of his appeal ends and another begins, at least time-wise.

Also, I'm almost 100% positive that my copy of "Out of Time" is in fact that first one that my dad brought home all those years ago.  So....yeah, sorry, dad.  I stole your copy of the album and now it lives with me.  It's probably time for me to buy a new one, though, because it's scratched to shit, and I can say without hesitation that at least two or three of the tracks are unplayable.  And I am definitely on my 2nd copy of AftP.  "Monster", though, didn't hold up so well.  I rarely listen to it, and it wouldn't be at all close to my top R.E.M. albums.  And I haven't bought a new R.E.M. album in ages, though I did like "Reveal" quite a bit.  There is an R.E.M. album dropping in 2008, and maybe I'll check it out.  Or maybe tomorrow I'll just listen to copious amounts of the R.E.M. I already have, since typing this has made me want to.

"MTV Unplugged" 10,000 Maniacs (1993)

There were other albums before this, but this is the first album I remember asking for independent of my dad's influence, and absent of the (sad) influence of early 90's Top 40 radio.  I don't know when I got it, but to my thinking, it must have been right around the time of its release (which Wikipedia says is late October, 1993), since I heard it in a mall music store (over the store's sound system; the actual MTV Unplugged may have even been on the TVs in the store, for all I can remember).  In my memory, it goes something like this: "Dad, how can I find out who this is?" "Uh, ask someone."  "Okay."  The answer was, of course, 10,000 Maniacs.  And I'm fairly certain my dad bought me the CD at that point. 

I would have been a freshman at that point, and for some reason, in my memories of this historic event, I'm younger than that.  But there's no mistaking that it was this 10,000 Maniacs album and not some other, because I still don't own any studio albums of theirs.  And frankly, I had thought I was into a lot of different music by the time I was a freshman, but maybe I'm wrong.  There are things I can remember liking before the Maniacs (REM, for instance, and lots of classic rock), but most things came after.  It's hard for me to pinpoint exactly how I felt about the album, actually, because it was so long ago, even if I did get it in early 1994.  That's 13 years ago, and I didn't think about music then the way I think about it now.  I'm not sure if I was aware of MTV Unplugged at that point, or not.  I don't know if I was listening to Q101 at the time, or not, though I suspect not, because most of my alternative leanings came after I got a car.  Anything I listened to before the car got played on one of those giant boom box contraptions, with a CD player on top and two tape decks in the front. 

Maybe I've got my chronology wrong here, but I swear, everything came after.  That's how it feels, anyway, in my little personal history through music.  Whether or not I've got it right doesn't matter, because it was an important moment if I remember it that way.  Suffice to say, this album probably begins my musical life, and it also probably begins the great branching of my musical life from both my dad and my sister.  All three paths have crossed and run concurrent at certain points--and now my brother's musical life is doing much the same thing with all of us--but this is, for me, the first great point on my own path.

I still really enjoy this album, and pull it out occasionally for a spin.  And songs from it make my mixes all the time.  But as mentioned before, I don't listen to other 10,000 Maniacs albums, so the album wasn't a jumping off point in that sense.  It's likely that I know every single word of every single song on the album, and I think (but am not 100% certain) that the CD that is in my books at home is the 2nd copy I've owned.  On some of these early influential albums, I've owned many copies of each CD.  That's how much play they got.  That's how much they got beat up, going from my car (though I am guessing that there was no CD player in the Corolla--Kate, do you know?) to my room to wherever I was. 

Regardless, this was it, for me.  This is where I start my own personal musical history.

(This is the first in a series of posts about albums that influenced me.  I'm not sure that's the best phrasing for it--"influenced" me--but I can't think of how else to say it, and I've been thinking around it since the end of NaBloPoMo, so we're stuck with it.  Anyhow, periodically, whenever I feel like it, I'll add another.)