The Music of Life
These 20 albums musically define my nearly-30 years of life, all the way from my earliest memories of LPs on my parents’ record player, through cassette-taping stuff off the radio, through the punk-rock / nerd-rock years, and right on into the industrial / electro phase, which is now progressing into something of an epic prog rock / metal fascination.
Only about 50% of this list would currently qualify as my “favorite music”, but every single album in this list would make me happy if it came up in a random selection, and I’d be crooning along with any of it if it were heard in a club or queued up on a jukebox. The list is vaguely chronological, with the Smashing Pumpkins album marking my first year of university.
The Beatles – Rubber Soul
The Clash – London Calling
The Who – Tommy
Operation Ivy – Unity
NoFX – Punk in Drublic
Guns ‘n’ Roses – Appetite for Destruction
They Might Be Giants – Flood
Prodigy – Music for the Jilted Generation
Smashing Pumpkins – Mellon Collie & the Infinite Sadness
XTC – Black Sea
Frank Black – Teenager of the Year
Thomas Dolby – The Golden Age of Wireless
Mouse on Mars – Autoditacker
Leftfield – Leftism
Massive Attack – Mezzanine
Sloan – Action Pact
Covenant – United States of Mind
VAST – Visual Audio Sensory Theater
Nine Inch Nails – With Teeth
Fischerspooner – Odyssey
Avantasia – The Metal Opera
This list was distastefully inspired by a Facebook meme, horrid things. But I found it interesting to consider, and once I got going I wanted to see how it would shape up. What ARE the most influential albums in my life? I think I got this mostly right.
Bands I wanted to fit in there but couldn’t pick an album: Foo Fighters, Megadeth, Descendents, Bad Religion
What do you want to bet that these memes are routinely started by Facebook personnel in order to collect massive amounts of marketing data…? I mean, that’s what I’d do….
More reading on social networking memes:
Charles Darwin Tagged You in a Note on Facebook – analysis of the evolution of Facebook’s “25 things” craze via epidemiology analogy.
