An Album that altered our Musical direction

[ManFromGlass]

I also find it interesting that there are albums I would never listen to now mostly due to lyrical content. Not the curse words but narrow-minded concepts of violence and negativity. In the teenage years I was clueless to “deeper” meanings. I just wanted tunes I could play loud.

[redlester]

For me this happened three times in my life.

Age 13: The first one - A school friend found out I had two (mono) cassette recorders at home, and asked me to make a copy of a tape to (I think) impress a girl. The tape was Tarkus, by Emerson Lake & Palmer. Prior to this my record buying was limited to comedy stuff like Monty Python and the Goons. Hearing Tarkus blew my young mind and even now makes me feel like a young teenager when I hear it. Also opened me up to the world of prog rock and ensured I was addicted to Alan Freeman's Saturday afternoon Radio 1 show for years, until it was sadly replaced by the heavy rock dirge of Tommy Vance. I still like some of the more tuneful prog stuff to this day, just last week on a drive to Manchester I listened to Keith Emerson's piano concerto followed by Five Bridges by The Nice.
https://youtu.be/WKNOlDtZluU

Age 17: The most life-defining one - (two singles rather than an album) - I was by now an avid reader of both Melody Maker and the NME each week, so naturally gravitated towards John Peel's show, 22.00-00.00 every week night. By now I had two hi-fi cassette decks so could make compilation tapes from the tracks I liked. Peel was by now playing a mixture of hippy stuff, folk stuff, reggae and this new "Punk" thing, which really just seemed like a daft fad to me. Until the night he played London Lady/Grip by The Stranglers for the first time, followed by Oh Bondage, Up Yours/I Am A Cliche by X-Ray Spex. I was spellbound by both of these and they became my first "New Wave" purchases the following day. From that I was totally ensconced in the scene and my mind opened to the bands/artists who provided the soundtrack to my life; Joy Division, New Order, The Fall, Buzzcocks, Magazine, Wire, The Undertones, Talking Heads, Ramones, Gang of Four, etc., etc. My choice of friends and acquaintances from then on, which shaped my adult life from that point, would have been totally different without that 'Eureka' moment provided by the Stranglers and Poly Styrene. Plastic's real when you're real sick.
https://youtu.be/zrzENjzd7Mg
https://youtu.be/aTfgWegud7o

Age 56: The most expensive one - I spent 30 years solidly resisting the idea of "dance music" as a thing of merit. For me, music was for listening to. I dismissed everything to do with Hip-Hop and everything which came after including House and Techno. I was very closed-minded. Having spent most of my adult life listening to the music I fell in love with during my late teens/early 20's, with just a few more modern exceptions allowed to creep in, by now we had the internet and I had discovered this app called Soundcloud which seemed interesting. For some reason one of the tracks it was suggesting me to listen to was something called "Fanfare (Marc Romboy moving Atoms Mix)" by Emerson Digweed and Muir. The artists name, being redolent of Emerson Lake and Palmer from my youth, made me click on it and give it a listen. What followed was another epiphany which, to cut a long story short, has sent me into my 60's on a great journey of discovery of the wonders of all sorts of electronic dance music and also re-kindled my love of ambient/electronica from my prog rock days. It also resulted in my reviving my love of recording (after last dabbling with a Teac 4-track in the early 80's) and led to where we are now - a Mac Pro with a massive library of plug-ins, various hardware synths and a growing Eurorack fetish which I see as the thing which will keep me occupied well into my retirement.
https://soundcloud.com/marcromboy/emers ... ving-atoms

[Martin Walker]

Age 13: The first one - A school friend found out I had two (mono) cassette recorders at home, and asked me to make a copy of a tape to (I think) impress a girl. The tape was Tarkus, by Emerson Lake & Palmer.

That might be wishful thinking, as I've personally met very few girls that got their heads around Tarkus (as much as I loved it)

I do however remember taking my LP into school and playing it, gaining grudging admiration from several 'blues only' blokes who previously had seen little merit in prog.

Martin

[tea for two]

I've loads of albums that I love but the one that has impacted me more than any other is The Stone Roses' debut. Came across it at a house party when I was 16 (a few years after they split).
A truly magical impact.

This brought a smile. 2013 when The Roses did their Finsbury Park return gig, a tout offered me 10squid tickets I couldn't belieeeeve it.

::

Since we're on multiple suggestions, another art-of-the-possible album for me was Radiohead's The Bends.

Great to see this album getting a mention drew, still in my top 5 of all time. Some phenomenal work on this record...Nice Dream, My Iron Lung, title track, Street Spirit...fantastic shout sir

Thom said the audience want to hear Street Spirit, yet they don't realise how much of a toll it takes on him. I get it as it was one of my songs in a certain point in my life.

::

"Alivemuthaforya" recorded by a fusion 'supergroup' "The CBS Allstars" led by Billy Cobham and including Tom Scott, Mark Soskin, Steve Kahn and Alphonso Johnson at the Montreaux Jazz Festival in 1977. Both are well worth a listen.

Tom Scott was my first intro to Jazz on a record.
I hadn't heard of Alivemuthaforya I shall have a listen like the Whistler's Mother painting as album cover I only know this from Mr Bean filum lol.

::

Primal Scream: "Evil Heat"

I was reading a recent guardian interview with Bobby Gillespie where he talks about Andrew Weatherall producing Screamadelica. That was a record and a half.
V festival 2002 I think. First thing Bobby said to the crowd including me " F YOU. " Lol.

::

I always come back to -
Mary Margaret O’Hara - Miss America. Brilliant + deeper with each listening

Gotta check this out.

I also find it interesting that there are albums I would never listen to now mostly due to lyrical content. Not the curse words but narrow-minded concepts of violence and negativity. In the teenage years I was clueless to “deeper” meanings. I just wanted tunes I could play loud.

Same here there's stuff I won't listen to now becuase of lyrical content, that I listened to in my youff.

::

Age 56: The most expensive one - I spent 30 years solidly resisting the idea of "dance music" as a thing of merit. I was very closed-minded. For some reason one of the tracks it was suggesting me to listen to was something called "Fanfare (Marc Romboy moving Atoms Mix)" by Emerson Digweed and Muir. The artists name, being redolent of Emerson Lake and Palmer from my youth, made me click on it and give it a listen. What followed was another epiphany which, to cut a long story short, has sent me into my 60's on a great journey of discovery of the wonders of all sorts of electronic dance music and also re-kindled my love of ambient/electronica from my prog rock days. It also resulted in my reviving my love of recording (after last dabbling with a Teac 4-track in the early 80's) and led to where we are now - a Mac Pro with a massive library of plug-ins, various hardware synths and a growing Eurorack fetish which I see as the thing which will keep me occupied well into my retirement.
https://soundcloud.com/marcromboy/emers ... ving-atoms

Dance Music is one of the best things musically for Not going gently into the good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light with Dance Music.

[ManFromGlass]

I have a half baked theory in the back of my mind about dance music. It is loosely based on what I heard Phillip Glass say in an interview. He said when he started out there was an entrenched style of music that composers could rebel against.
Based on his comment I thought that early dance music (before it became mainstream and just a formula) was rebelling against one of the few remaining areas to rebel against and deconstruct, namely the drum rhythms. Stripping rhythm down to the primal drums and making them huge, processed, electronic etc etc.
Could be a total crap theory but that’s all I got for now!

[Martin Walker]

I also find it interesting that there are albums I would never listen to now mostly due to lyrical content. Not the curse words but narrow-minded concepts of violence and negativity. In the teenage years I was clueless to “deeper” meanings. I just wanted tunes I could play loud.

I've recently had a most intriguing experience in this vein (and I'm not talking about my Covid jab )

Forty years ago my musical collaborator Mitt wrote some weird and convoluted lyrics and created a song with them in his late teens (to give you an idea, the title was 'Mathematic Hero Cage'. He recently dug these lyrics out and and sang them to a track that I'd created without hearing his original version. I then concentrated on the final production aspects after we'd drafted in a guest drummer and guitarist.

I deliberately didn't listen to the 40-year old version until our new one was finished, but when I finally did hear the original song (identical words, but completely different tune) it was really poignant to hear the difference in attitude to life from both of us in the ensuing forty years. His early version was weird and wonderfully fresh, while the new version sounds aggressive and world-weary in delivery, and of course his voice has dropped significantly in pitch.

Strange how the same words can result in a totally different message across the years!

Martin

[Drew Stephenson]

Strange how the same words can result in a totally different message across the years!

Martin

Kodachrome, by Paul Simon in 1973, has the line "everything looks worse in black and white" but when he sang it at the concert in the park in 91 he changed it to "everything looks better in black and white". Which I thought was very interesting in a similar way.

[Martin Walker]

Strange how the same words can result in a totally different message across the years!

Martin

Kodachrome, by Paul Simon in 1973, has the line "everything looks worse in black and white" but when he sang it at the concert in the park in 91 he changed it to "everything looks better in black and white". Which I thought was very interesting in a similar way.

Indeed - the most profound change in a track I've ever heard was Joni Mitchell's 'Big Yellow Taxi', from the bright environmental concerns of her original 1970 version, to a chilling orchestrally-accompanied version much more recently, sung with an older, wiser and sadder voice at a lower pitch and a slower tempo.

Wish I could find that later version again

Martin

[Murray B]

Is that the version on Shine? released 2007

[Folderol]

I've puzzled over this thread for some time, and have come to the conclusion that there is no individual album that altered my direction. It's rather a case of a slow tiny little nudges from everything I've heard and enjoyed.

[Ian Shaw]

I'd have to say Peter Gabriel's 3rd solo album, the melted face one.
Nothing sounded like it. It was dark, dirty, foreboding, & then there was Biko. It opened up a whole political world I knew nothing about, & a musical world I also new nothing about. It led me to WOMAD, the first festival I went to which probably changed everything for me.

[OneWorld]

I've puzzled over this thread for some time, and have come to the conclusion that there is no individual album that altered my direction. It's rather a case of a slow tiny little nudges from everything I've heard and enjoyed.

Yes I feel the same, music is an ever changing concept, you think you’ve heard it all, then along comes something new. The nearest I could possibly get to a definitive choice is referring to the first album that had profound influence me was John Mayall’s Bare Wires, the next I guess was Tubular Bells, I currently enamoured with a few of the K-Pop artistes, they are so slick, the likes of KDA, Black Pink, but then there have been people like Keith Jarrett, Hugh Masekela, Nana Vasconcelas, Bach, Chopin, Debussy, Beethoven, Shostakovich, Schoenberg, Bhundu Boys, Paquito D’Rivieras, ABBA, Donovan, Dylan, Beach Boys, Stones, Beatles, Floyd, Manitas de Plata, Julian Bream, John Martin, Davy Graham, John Renbourne, Magazine, Gato Barbieri, David Byrne, Brian Eno, Fela Kurtis, Segun Adewale, Roksopp, Asia, David Guetta, Villa Lobos, Alberta Rodriguez, Mose FanFan……..the list goes on and on, I cannot choose a more influential album no more than I could choose my favourite tipple, I guess I live in the moment, and perhaps so easily please, and glad of it

[ajay_m]

Laurie Anderson. O Superman just totally recalibrated everything you could define about music with its stark, laconic stripped to the bone arrangement. Her collaboration with Peter Gabriel was very fruitful too.

And, the Blue Nile's "Hats" which just sounds like nothing else, elegiac, ethereal, utterly heartbreaking. The track "the downtown lights" has been covered by a lot of other artists.

[ManFromGlass]

O Superman!
The lyrics are still firmly embedded in my memory.

[Martin Walker]

Is that the version on Shine? released 2007

No, I thought I'd found the track I remembered when I read about Shine, but that version of Big Yellow Taxi had accordions added to the arrangement - the version I remember was a sort of late night special with orchestral accompaniment (specifically strings, for a more chilled cinematic feel), taken at a significantly slower tempo.

Martin

[tea for two]

I've puzzled over this thread for some time, and have come to the conclusion that there is no individual album that altered my direction. It's rather a case of a slow tiny little nudges from everything I've heard and enjoyed.

Yes I feel the same, music is an ever changing concept, you think you’ve heard it all, then along comes something new. I cannot choose a more influential album no more than I could choose my favourite tipple, I guess I live in the moment, and perhaps so easily please, and glad of it

For me it's an age thing.

When I was younger I just hadn't heard that much music, so it was easy to have my musical direction altered by music I hadn't heard before.

As I got older I listened to more. It's then just nudges here there from as many genres as I can think of and from various parts of the World I chanced upon, got recommended, sought out.
After youtube got massive, I've chanced upon even more music from around the World that's nudged me in someway although you wouldn't know it listening to music I make lol.

[tea for two]

Laurie Anderson. O Superman just totally recalibrated everything you could define about music with its stark, laconic stripped to the bone arrangement. Her collaboration with Peter Gabriel was very fruitful too.

Laurie Anderson wooo.
1981 Big Science album, decade before Bjork, Laurie had far out vocals quirky instrumentation.
Notably on the track Walk the Dog. Bagpipes on the track Sweaters. Big band on Example22.

Including being a massive influence upon Bjork.
Laurie influenced Kate Bush, Pet Shop Boys.
Laurie's vocal rhythmic manipulation influenced Kraftwerk 1986 album Electric Cafe.

[tea for two]

I'd have to say Peter Gabriel's 3rd solo album, the melted face one.
Nothing sounded like it. It was dark, dirty, foreboding, & then there was Biko. It opened up a whole political world I knew nothing about, & a musical world I also new nothing about. It led me to WOMAD, the first festival I went to which probably changed everything for me.

Peter's soundtrack for The Last Temptation of Christ, I consider one of the finest soundtracks in movie history, opened my ears to World Music.
It was such a profound influence upon me.

It was because of Peter I discovered Sufi Qawali singing of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, the double Electric Violin Viola Cello of L Shankar.
Later through Peter's Real World label musicians as Afro Celt Sound System.

Incidentally the late dear Steve Howell aka Hollowsun did the sampling for Peter on The Last Temptation of Christ.

[tea for two]

I've recently had a most intriguing experience in this vein (and I'm not talking about my Covid jab )

Forty years ago my musical collaborator Mitt wrote some weird and convoluted lyrics and created a song with them in his late teens (to give you an idea, the title was 'Mathematic Hero Cage'. He recently dug these lyrics out and and sang them to a track that I'd created without hearing his original version. I then concentrated on the final production aspects after we'd drafted in a guest drummer and guitarist.

I deliberately didn't listen to the 40-year old version until our new one was finished, but when I finally did hear the original song (identical words, but completely different tune) it was really poignant to hear the difference in attitude to life from both of us in the ensuing forty years. His early version was weird and wonderfully fresh, while the new version sounds aggressive and world-weary in delivery, and of course his voice has dropped significantly in pitch.

Strange how the same words can result in a totally different message across the years!

Martin

Then there's Jon Anderson, lol sounds almost same now as he did in his early 20s.

Also Asha Bhosle the famous Indian singer she sounds so fresh in her 50's
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Ob8rBaUT0Yk
Song from 1min27
Brimful of Asha number 1 uk hit single 1998 name checked Asha in the title and lyrics.

I have a female chum in her 50s. Some of the worst things you could think of to happen to a Girl then a Woman happened to her.
Yet she is chirpy, giggly, spirited. Not world weary at all.

I'm so full of admiration for Women in refugee tents with their toddlers, children, keeping their child's spirits up, keeping their children smiley.

I would say our makeup has lot to do with how we are with life knokcing us down time and again, seeing adverse things happening to people we care about, seeing horrific things going on around the world.

I adore this early performance from Joni, with Joni giggling.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GFB-d-8_bvY

There's just as much uplift on Earth as there is downturn. It's up to us where we reside.

Eternal spark inside all of us, we gotta work to keep it from getting clouded by life, for our own sake, for the sake of those we care about.

[Arpangel]

Laurie Anderson wooo.
1981 Big Science album, decade before Bjork, Laurie had far out vocals quirky instrumentation.

Yes, I heard O Superman on the radio, I had to find a phone box and call my friend, it was a complete game changer, I went to see her do the all day thing at the Dominion in 1983, OMG.
It was Lexicons a go-go, and loads of Eventide stuff, big Oberheims, all twinkling away mysteriously.
And WTF was this Harmonizer thing? I wanted one f*****g yesterday.
I never thought her music would become dated, I thought it timeless, but it has, it sounds very cheesy now, almost embarrassing, some of it, time and technology really put things into perspective, and the more technology you use, the more you risk becoming cheesy.

[ManFromGlass]

Curious as to your definition of cheese.
Are you thinking some sound(s) that was/were so unique and cool but now due to over use by other bands and becoming a standard that it has attained the status of cheesy?
And don’t forget -
It only takes a number one hit that features that cheese box to bring it back into style!

Quick thought - seems synths and other keyboards achieve the status of cheesy but do guitar sounds?

[Drew Stephenson]

Quick thought - seems synths and other keyboards achieve the status of cheesy but do guitar sounds?

Absolutely (in my opinion), Slash-style wailing guitar sounds, power-ballad guitar solos, etc. all sound cheesy and dated to my ears now in the same way as a "synth lead" patch.
Whereas, again in my closed, little mind, an acoustic instrument never does.

[Dave.P]

Many new things to listen to here and thanks all for that.

The one album that keeps me coming back to it is New York by Lou Reed. A perfect to me distillation of words and music, and I always have strived for that "sounds so simple" guitar sound ever since I heard it.

Apart from that: it is also and always The Blue Nile.

Update with a link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZH96BsL1R3U

G,D,A,D on Dirty Boulevard. So simple in theory......

[Arpangel]

Curious as to your definition of cheese.
Are you thinking some sound(s) that was/were so unique and cool but now due to over use by other bands and becoming a standard that it has attained the status of cheesy?
And don’t forget -
It only takes a number one hit that features that cheese box to bring it back into style!

Quick thought - seems synths and other keyboards achieve the status of cheesy but do guitar sounds?

I think it’s the vocal delivery, it was very unusual at the time, and added weight to what she was saying, also, she used the Harmonizer to assist in that, making her voice lower, I use the word cheesy in all sorts, sometimes it just sounds uncool to do certain things, out of time, then they come back, and are cool again.

[MOF]

sometimes it just sounds uncool to do certain things, out of time, then they come back, and are cool again.

The vocoder still works for me, albeit usually more subtly than ELO used it.

[Dave.P]

One last thought and an album that is pretty much in my DNA
Blood On The Tracks. (Bob Dylan)

Maybe the one that got me playing guitar apart from anything else!

[Arpangel]

One last thought and an album that is pretty much in my DNA
Blood On The Tracks. (Bob Dylan)

Maybe the one that got me playing guitar apart from anything else!

Yes, a life changer, when I first met my wife, we moved the Dansette into the middle of the hallway, and had this album on the auto-changer all day, every day.

[Dave.P]

One last thought and an album that is pretty much in my DNA
Blood On The Tracks. (Bob Dylan)

Maybe the one that got me playing guitar apart from anything else!

Yes, a life changer, when I first met my wife, we moved the Dansette into the middle of the hallway, and had this album on the auto-changer all day, every day.

What a fantastic picture that conjures up!
This album soundtracked so many relationships I suspect, both good and tumultuous.
It has the reputation for being the Dylan album for people that do not get Dylan, but it is just a fantastic piece of work whatever part of the spectrum you come from.

[Arpangel]

One last thought and an album that is pretty much in my DNA
Blood On The Tracks. (Bob Dylan)

Maybe the one that got me playing guitar apart from anything else!

Yes, a life changer, when I first met my wife, we moved the Dansette into the middle of the hallway, and had this album on the auto-changer all day, every day.

What a fantastic picture that conjures up!
This album soundtracked so many relationships I suspect, both good and tumultuous.
It has the reputation for being the Dylan album for people that do not get Dylan, but it is just a fantastic piece of work whatever part of the spectrum you come from.

There’s a guitar solo at the end of Meet Me In The Morning, I just can’t say, it’s just too much, just too much, beyond.

[BigRedX]

For me, the album in question was Eating People - Hints For The Housewife by The Instant Automatons which was originally released on cassette in 1979 and available to anyone who sent the band a C90 cassette along with a Stamped Addressed Envelope. I found out about it from a news article in NME and was intrigued enough to send them a cassette to find out what it was all about.

I suspect it's an album that very few people have ever heard of and even fewer actually like. I have to admit that apart from a few tracks I wasn't that impressed the music. However what it did was show me that a lack of money was no obstacle to getting my band's music heard and if there was an audience for The Instant Automatons, there might just be an audience for our music too.

My band at the time was a recording only band, as even in those days of punk and post-punk you were still expected to have reasonably conventional instrumentation and a drum kit and amps if you wanted to play gigs. So instead we wrote songs and recorded them (live, direct to cassette) almost entirely for our own amusement. The idea of recording and releasing a conventional 7" DIY single never occurred to us. For a start even the £153 it cost The Desperate Bicycles to make their debut single was way beyond our means, and besides if we weren't gigging how would anyone find out that we had a record for sale?

However an Instant Automatons-style DIY cassette release was within our grasp, and so over the 1979 Christmas Holidays the band recorded a handful of new songs with more punky and avant garde influences to go with "the best" of our more prog-rock influenced back catalogue, and ended up with enough material to fill a C60 cassette. I sent off press releases to the weekly music press and by some fluke both NME and Sounds published them.

The result was that for the first few months of 1980 I was inundated with blank cassettes and SEAs! Also as I later discovered, compared with the majority of DIY free cassettes, ours was a collection of songs and instrumentals with actual tunes and reasonably conventional song structures, and therefore a lot more "accessible" even to the average punk/post-punk listener who was already more used to unconventional music.

And based on the reputation our cassette was getting, The Instant Automatons asked us to record four and a half minutes of music to go on their "Angst In My Pants" double EP. So, in the space of 12 months I went from being essentially a bedroom guitarist who would have probably given up playing as university work took precedence, to someone whose music was on a a proper record and was played on John Peel's radio show, all from a taking a chance on sending a cassette to a band I'd never previously heard of.

As a result writing, recording and playing music has been a massive part of my life for the last 40+ years.