As soon as the needle dropped on this album I was hooked on rock. I was around 10. Everything else before was my parents music...
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consciousness-altering songs or albums
- Thread starter pcake
- Start date
First time I heard Exit, Stage Left, which was also my first time hearing Rush. When I heard the fill in YYZ where he hits the harmonics at the end! I think it was 1984 or so and I was 14.
The next one was Stanley Clarke School Days. What was he doing on bass?! It was probably 1986.
There have been a bunch of others.
Hearing and then seeing Primus in their early club days a couple years before Frizzle Fry. What Les was doing by taking what Stanley and Geddy were doing on the bass and combining them in a quirky, punk rock fashion blew me away. I wore out my vinyl copy of Suck On This.
The next one was Stanley Clarke School Days. What was he doing on bass?! It was probably 1986.
There have been a bunch of others.
Hearing and then seeing Primus in their early club days a couple years before Frizzle Fry. What Les was doing by taking what Stanley and Geddy were doing on the bass and combining them in a quirky, punk rock fashion blew me away. I wore out my vinyl copy of Suck On This.
The Dixie Dregs album "Freefall" and "What If" in 1977 and 1978.
These albums established an understanding and expectation within me of what modern music could be; what it should be. For me, the stellar musicianship and inspired compositional skills of Steve Morse and his colleagues in the Dregs and the Steve Morse Band have never been exceeded.
These albums established an understanding and expectation within me of what modern music could be; what it should be. For me, the stellar musicianship and inspired compositional skills of Steve Morse and his colleagues in the Dregs and the Steve Morse Band have never been exceeded.
For me, it was a show. It was 1978, I was 17, and a friend of mine talked me into going to see the Tubes at the Palace Theater in Albany, NY. This show was part of their "What Do You Want From Life?" tour, and the inside of that double album shows exactly what ran over me that night:
That show forever changed my idea of what a rock concert could and/or should be (although, to be fair, I was only passingly acquainted with FZ at that point in my life, and that hole in my "education" would definitely be filled over the decades
. A Tubes show was art rock at its finest: a fun, incredibly choreographed extravaganza backed by a thunderous, ass-kicking band (the thunder was created by a lineup that included a bass player, two guitarists, two keyboardists, and two drummers). The opener on that album, "Overture," was the opener I got that night, and for me, it hasn't lost one bit of its arty/proggy awesomeness:
IMHO, "What Do You Want From Live?" is one of the best, most overlooked live rock albums ever, and it definitely changed my musical life...
That show forever changed my idea of what a rock concert could and/or should be (although, to be fair, I was only passingly acquainted with FZ at that point in my life, and that hole in my "education" would definitely be filled over the decades
. A Tubes show was art rock at its finest: a fun, incredibly choreographed extravaganza backed by a thunderous, ass-kicking band (the thunder was created by a lineup that included a bass player, two guitarists, two keyboardists, and two drummers). The opener on that album, "Overture," was the opener I got that night, and for me, it hasn't lost one bit of its arty/proggy awesomeness:IMHO, "What Do You Want From Live?" is one of the best, most overlooked live rock albums ever, and it definitely changed my musical life...
Most music I love. Some standouts include both of the first two Gone albums. My stoned teenage self one time listened to those two records back to back for 4 hours, eyes closed, seeing visions compelled by Greg Ginn's atonal, chaotic, alien palette as propelled by the incomparable rhythm section of Andrew Weiss and Simeon Cain. A bit later in life, Coltrane's "A Love Supreme" took me to a more emotional, and perhaps deeper realm that changed my thoughts about music entirely.
For me it probably was "Quartet" by Ultravox, especially the song "Visions in Blue".
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My record buying/listening/collecting has always been eclectic (see:weird)
Hot Rats! was similarly profound for me. But 2 other albums had similar
mind blowing results for me.
1. GONG----- YOU
Is it rock? Is it jazz? Is it noise? .....yes
You don't need to be on mind altering substances.. It IS a mind altering substance.
2. The Sensational Alex Harvey band---- Tommarow belongs to me
I became a true believer.. back purchased their entire catalog
Hail Vibrania..Vambo rools!!
Hot Rats! was similarly profound for me. But 2 other albums had similar
mind blowing results for me.
1. GONG----- YOU
Is it rock? Is it jazz? Is it noise? .....yes
You don't need to be on mind altering substances.. It IS a mind altering substance.
2. The Sensational Alex Harvey band---- Tommarow belongs to me
I became a true believer.. back purchased their entire catalog
Hail Vibrania..Vambo rools!!
December 26th, 1963, a couple of hours after I Want To Hold Your Hand was released here on the West Coast, all I knew was that they were called The Beatles and they were from England, knew nothing about the hair,not a victim of the hype, it was instantly my favorite song, I was 11 yrs. old.
This is interesting. I was 13 at the time - same reaction. A sense that something not just different but also wonderful was happening. Didn't change my world but gave me a real sense that there was an electricity captured in this raw track. Went to the local record shop in Jamaica Queens and found the 45. My prized possession for many years. I still remember the picture on the sleeve.
I have to laugh; I bought Exile on Main Street, because it was the follow-up to Sticky Fingers. The new Stones album, you just bought it. Took it home, played it and hated it: It just sounded like this murky, all-over-the-place mess, I just really, really didn't like it. Over the next year, I'd play it a few times, same reaction.
Then somehow, I put it on a year or so later, and BOOM ! !, the little light came one and it's been a fave ever since. For sure, there's still a few tunes that are just might sketchy to me, but the rest of it is Mother Lode stuff. And of course, the lyric 'the sunshine bores the daylights out of me' are words to live by in some of my play all night / sleep all day gigging years.
After the usual suspects (being The Beatles, specifically A Hard Days Night & Sgt Peppers), what REALLY blew me away was The Yes Album (50 years old this week, I believe), which I first listened to in around 1972....
I spent four weeks of COVID downtime replicating Peaches en Regalia in Logic Pro. Zappa was the master of combining two instruments you don't usually hear together - like a flute and a distorted electric guitar - and getting a great texture out of it.
Here's an excerpted piece I wrote a number of years ago which addressed this subject (edited for language and subject matter):
Thank you HerrVN for the muse.
Hmmmm, five or six songs or albums which changed my life or let me hear music with fresh ears? It turns out that seven is my lucky numb
I remember that we moved into our house in Sandy Springs outside of Atlanta when my dad returned from a combat tour and left the Air Force. (I recently had occasion to return to the Atlanta area for a weekend of work and went to the house. It was for sale and the house that my parents had purchased for $38,500 back in 68 was for sale, according to Zillow, for $480,000. Shoulda kept it, I'm thinking) But in any case, I was probably eight years old, maybe nine, and two boys who lived down the street, Bob and Tom Hacker, invited me, and I think my younger brother as well, to their basement to listen to some music. I remember that they were roughly my age and that their dad was raising them alone because their mom had passed away.
They put on two albums, one was Iron Butterfly's "In A Gadda Da Vida"* and the other was Led Zeppelin's 1st album. LZ-1 which simply blew me away! I'd never really heard anything like it and I can still feel the base power of it, the blues turned into something totally unique and different. It is inextricably linked to their second album as well LZ-2 which I'm thinking that they might have played for me too or instead, but the mists of time make things unclear. Both of these were transformational for me. I've been a Zep head ever since, regardless of their transgressions and thievery against other artists over the years. I forgive them their sins because of their overall place in music history and the transformative qualities of their works.
Second on my list is an almost unknown acid-rock band out of Fort Worth, Texas. The first album I ever bought was, as I recall, purchased at a Sears store at the Golf Mill Shopping Center in Chicago Illinois. I bought Bloodrock II because of a song, "D.O.A. which was about a fatal airplane accident. I don't listen to the song anymore although the CD is currently in the que of my vehicle sound system. The song just creeps me out, having seen enough death and destruction. What's cool to a ten or eleven year old is not necessarily cool any more, but the rest of the album is really excellent, the lead guitar work is so fluid and the rhythm section is nearly as tight (I said nearly) as that of Deep Purple's classic line-up of Paice/Glover.
A very inventive and underrated band which was both ground breaking and influential. They were to acid-rock what Metallica is to Heavy Metal, IMO, and were very prominently featured by Dave Rabbit on the only surviving example of his twenty-one day run of pirate radio broadcasts out of a w#@%#house in Saigon in 1971 on the "Big 69" The show was called "Radio First Termer" and has been famous (or infamous) in military circles for over forty years.
Next on my list is The song "More Than A Feeling" by Boston from their eponymous first album. It was 1977 and I was in the eleventh grade. I was over at Paul Shear's house in his bedroom with David Hanson (a long-haired freak but one of the top five or six students in the twelfth grade as I recall and Paul's other closest friend, Jeff Mitchell who later became a very good friend of mine. (Jeff's nickname was Jeff Mitchell M.D. for master of disaster as he was always getting busted up in one way or another). I remember the time he and I were sitting in what had been my brother's room, bagging up a couple of pounds . . . but that's another story.
In any event, we were hanging out in Paul's room and he had just rolled a large joint of Panama Red which he had "borrowed " (stolen) from his mom. She was very recently divorced and looking back, I suppose that she was using it to self-medicate. This was the real $#!+, so red that it was almost grey and those big spliffs would get resinated after just a couple of hits. It had an unique taste, not as sweet as Colombian Gold but every bit as potent in its own way. I haven't smoked dope for many years but if I were to taste it today, I'd recognize it right off. Anyway, we were getting nice and baked when "More Than A Feeling" came on the radio for the first time...That chorus, the way the Bass guitar blasted through and the unique layered effect which Tom Scholz was able to produce with the guitars (Thanks, M.I.T.) just cut through me like a laser guided missile. The fact that I was stoned to the bejesus zone probably didn't hurt much. ;-)
Edit: 7-24-2019 Here's a link to a Rick Beato Video. It's part of a superb series whereby he breaks down "What makes this song great."
I used to ask my mom if I could go fill up her car, a big Buick Electra 225 with a crushed velour interior, just so that I could listen to my favorite 8-track, Santana's Moonflower double album. God, the lushness of the live performance half, the richness and beauty of it with the Latin and Caribbean influences so rife throughout. I was playing bass guitar by then and learned as many of those songs as I could with my limited technical skills of the time. This was about 1978 I'm thinking, and I was entering or in my senior year of High School. The emotive passion of the song "Europa" is still one which can stir me all these years later.
I don't mean to rob Herr of any thunder but I also loved Weather Report's album, "Heavy Weather" and for many of the same reasons. And again, thank you Herr, for allowing me to re-listen to the song "Byrdland" with its beautiful plucked harmonics. Growing up in South Florida, even at the age of 16, I began to hear about this wild-a$$ Jazz bass player by the name of Jaco Pastorious. He had already been teaching bass at UofM in his early 20's and had brashly approached Joe Zawanul of the band, telling him that he (Jaco) was the best bass player on the planet, and giving Joe a cassette tape of his work. The story goes that Joe told him to "get the bleep outta here" but thankfully, Joe accidentally gave it a listen when he got back to Switzerland. This resulted in Jaco ending up as their bass player until mental illness and alleged substance abuse got the better of him. Here's a link of Jaco, already mostly homeless, showing his brilliance:
I also love his self-titled debut album but I agree that Heavy Weather brought "fusion jazz" into my consciousness where it has remained. Jaco, Stanley Clarke and Jeff Berlin...the three greats of the jazz bass guitar. Jaco and my friend LLL are the reasons for this photo of my Fender Jazz basses:
When I think of the tragedy of his death, even now, I get a bit emotional.
A couple of years later, I was fortunate to be hanging out at the patio of the Rathskeller on the campus of UofMiami where a band used to jam. It was comprised of members of the world renowned UofM concert jazz band and they named themselves The Dixie Dregs.
H O L Y $#!+ could they play! Their guitarist is a gentleman named Steve Morse, six consecutive time Guitar Player Magazine guitarist of the year . . . they actually retired him from the running. He later went on to be the guitarist for Yes and for over twenty years now, Deep Purple. Let's just leave it at this: He shreds! Andy West, the big, burly bearded bassist played a huge Alembic bass, the first I'd ever seen, and legend has it that Alembic was founded by Augustus Owsley, the guy who is alleged to have supplied the Grateful Dead with their LSD from the beginning. They called their genre "electric chamber music" I just call them awesome!
It's really tough to pick an album from them...they are all smokin hot but my two favorites are "Night of the Living Dregs" and Free Fall
Check out "The Bash" it's a lot of fun.
When I was at university here in Tampa, and living in a private co-ed dorm (that was interesting), I would fall asleep every night for months listening to probably my favorite album of all time, Steely Dan's "The Royal Scam" It just flows...from song...to song . . . to song, just like Pink Floyd "Dark Side" and that first Boston album. Every song an obtuse masterpiece of obscure meaning and nuance only truly accessible to the writers themselves but the whole is somehow greater than the sum of it's parts...like the Beatles. I defy anyone to listen to "Kid Charlemagne" and not be reduced nearly to tears by Larry Carlton's guitar solos at the bridge and coda...as beautiful and evocative as the Sax solo at the end of Bowie's "Changes". My God, I would want those two songs played at any memorial service for me if there ever were one.
Honorable mention must be given to the 1998 recording of "Du Hast" Live aus Berlin and to Acca Dacca's very early live video of It's a Long Way... filmed in Perth or Melbourne, probably in about 76 or 77, I'm not really sure. Perhaps one of my Australian friends can enlighten me.
Well Herr, that's my list, and I'll stand by it and defend it if necessary. Thank you my friend for causing me to reflect and recall these songs and albums of great meaning to me. You are a true inspiration to me.
*Iron Butterfly had the bad luck or poor judgment to choose Led Zeppelin as their tour's opening band to support their mega-hit "In A Gadda Da Vida" but of course by the end of the tour, no one gave two $#!+$ about them...it was all about the Zep.
edit: RIP Walter Becker 02-20-1950 - 09/03/2017 A great talent.
© Copyright: (ELG60)/M.W.P. 2015
Thank you HerrVN for the muse.
Hmmmm, five or six songs or albums which changed my life or let me hear music with fresh ears? It turns out that seven is my lucky numb
I remember that we moved into our house in Sandy Springs outside of Atlanta when my dad returned from a combat tour and left the Air Force. (I recently had occasion to return to the Atlanta area for a weekend of work and went to the house. It was for sale and the house that my parents had purchased for $38,500 back in 68 was for sale, according to Zillow, for $480,000. Shoulda kept it, I'm thinking) But in any case, I was probably eight years old, maybe nine, and two boys who lived down the street, Bob and Tom Hacker, invited me, and I think my younger brother as well, to their basement to listen to some music. I remember that they were roughly my age and that their dad was raising them alone because their mom had passed away.
They put on two albums, one was Iron Butterfly's "In A Gadda Da Vida"* and the other was Led Zeppelin's 1st album. LZ-1 which simply blew me away! I'd never really heard anything like it and I can still feel the base power of it, the blues turned into something totally unique and different. It is inextricably linked to their second album as well LZ-2 which I'm thinking that they might have played for me too or instead, but the mists of time make things unclear. Both of these were transformational for me. I've been a Zep head ever since, regardless of their transgressions and thievery against other artists over the years. I forgive them their sins because of their overall place in music history and the transformative qualities of their works.
Second on my list is an almost unknown acid-rock band out of Fort Worth, Texas. The first album I ever bought was, as I recall, purchased at a Sears store at the Golf Mill Shopping Center in Chicago Illinois. I bought Bloodrock II because of a song, "D.O.A. which was about a fatal airplane accident. I don't listen to the song anymore although the CD is currently in the que of my vehicle sound system. The song just creeps me out, having seen enough death and destruction. What's cool to a ten or eleven year old is not necessarily cool any more, but the rest of the album is really excellent, the lead guitar work is so fluid and the rhythm section is nearly as tight (I said nearly) as that of Deep Purple's classic line-up of Paice/Glover.
A very inventive and underrated band which was both ground breaking and influential. They were to acid-rock what Metallica is to Heavy Metal, IMO, and were very prominently featured by Dave Rabbit on the only surviving example of his twenty-one day run of pirate radio broadcasts out of a w#@%#house in Saigon in 1971 on the "Big 69" The show was called "Radio First Termer" and has been famous (or infamous) in military circles for over forty years.
Next on my list is The song "More Than A Feeling" by Boston from their eponymous first album. It was 1977 and I was in the eleventh grade. I was over at Paul Shear's house in his bedroom with David Hanson (a long-haired freak but one of the top five or six students in the twelfth grade as I recall and Paul's other closest friend, Jeff Mitchell who later became a very good friend of mine. (Jeff's nickname was Jeff Mitchell M.D. for master of disaster as he was always getting busted up in one way or another). I remember the time he and I were sitting in what had been my brother's room, bagging up a couple of pounds . . . but that's another story.
In any event, we were hanging out in Paul's room and he had just rolled a large joint of Panama Red which he had "borrowed " (stolen) from his mom. She was very recently divorced and looking back, I suppose that she was using it to self-medicate. This was the real $#!+, so red that it was almost grey and those big spliffs would get resinated after just a couple of hits. It had an unique taste, not as sweet as Colombian Gold but every bit as potent in its own way. I haven't smoked dope for many years but if I were to taste it today, I'd recognize it right off. Anyway, we were getting nice and baked when "More Than A Feeling" came on the radio for the first time...That chorus, the way the Bass guitar blasted through and the unique layered effect which Tom Scholz was able to produce with the guitars (Thanks, M.I.T.) just cut through me like a laser guided missile. The fact that I was stoned to the bejesus zone probably didn't hurt much. ;-)
Edit: 7-24-2019 Here's a link to a Rick Beato Video. It's part of a superb series whereby he breaks down "What makes this song great."
I used to ask my mom if I could go fill up her car, a big Buick Electra 225 with a crushed velour interior, just so that I could listen to my favorite 8-track, Santana's Moonflower double album. God, the lushness of the live performance half, the richness and beauty of it with the Latin and Caribbean influences so rife throughout. I was playing bass guitar by then and learned as many of those songs as I could with my limited technical skills of the time. This was about 1978 I'm thinking, and I was entering or in my senior year of High School. The emotive passion of the song "Europa" is still one which can stir me all these years later.
I don't mean to rob Herr of any thunder but I also loved Weather Report's album, "Heavy Weather" and for many of the same reasons. And again, thank you Herr, for allowing me to re-listen to the song "Byrdland" with its beautiful plucked harmonics. Growing up in South Florida, even at the age of 16, I began to hear about this wild-a$$ Jazz bass player by the name of Jaco Pastorious. He had already been teaching bass at UofM in his early 20's and had brashly approached Joe Zawanul of the band, telling him that he (Jaco) was the best bass player on the planet, and giving Joe a cassette tape of his work. The story goes that Joe told him to "get the bleep outta here" but thankfully, Joe accidentally gave it a listen when he got back to Switzerland. This resulted in Jaco ending up as their bass player until mental illness and alleged substance abuse got the better of him. Here's a link of Jaco, already mostly homeless, showing his brilliance:
I also love his self-titled debut album but I agree that Heavy Weather brought "fusion jazz" into my consciousness where it has remained. Jaco, Stanley Clarke and Jeff Berlin...the three greats of the jazz bass guitar. Jaco and my friend LLL are the reasons for this photo of my Fender Jazz basses:
When I think of the tragedy of his death, even now, I get a bit emotional.
A couple of years later, I was fortunate to be hanging out at the patio of the Rathskeller on the campus of UofMiami where a band used to jam. It was comprised of members of the world renowned UofM concert jazz band and they named themselves The Dixie Dregs.
H O L Y $#!+ could they play! Their guitarist is a gentleman named Steve Morse, six consecutive time Guitar Player Magazine guitarist of the year . . . they actually retired him from the running. He later went on to be the guitarist for Yes and for over twenty years now, Deep Purple. Let's just leave it at this: He shreds! Andy West, the big, burly bearded bassist played a huge Alembic bass, the first I'd ever seen, and legend has it that Alembic was founded by Augustus Owsley, the guy who is alleged to have supplied the Grateful Dead with their LSD from the beginning. They called their genre "electric chamber music" I just call them awesome!
It's really tough to pick an album from them...they are all smokin hot but my two favorites are "Night of the Living Dregs" and Free Fall
Check out "The Bash" it's a lot of fun.
When I was at university here in Tampa, and living in a private co-ed dorm (that was interesting), I would fall asleep every night for months listening to probably my favorite album of all time, Steely Dan's "The Royal Scam" It just flows...from song...to song . . . to song, just like Pink Floyd "Dark Side" and that first Boston album. Every song an obtuse masterpiece of obscure meaning and nuance only truly accessible to the writers themselves but the whole is somehow greater than the sum of it's parts...like the Beatles. I defy anyone to listen to "Kid Charlemagne" and not be reduced nearly to tears by Larry Carlton's guitar solos at the bridge and coda...as beautiful and evocative as the Sax solo at the end of Bowie's "Changes". My God, I would want those two songs played at any memorial service for me if there ever were one.
Honorable mention must be given to the 1998 recording of "Du Hast" Live aus Berlin and to Acca Dacca's very early live video of It's a Long Way... filmed in Perth or Melbourne, probably in about 76 or 77, I'm not really sure. Perhaps one of my Australian friends can enlighten me.
Well Herr, that's my list, and I'll stand by it and defend it if necessary. Thank you my friend for causing me to reflect and recall these songs and albums of great meaning to me. You are a true inspiration to me.
*Iron Butterfly had the bad luck or poor judgment to choose Led Zeppelin as their tour's opening band to support their mega-hit "In A Gadda Da Vida" but of course by the end of the tour, no one gave two $#!+$ about them...it was all about the Zep.
edit: RIP Walter Becker 02-20-1950 - 09/03/2017 A great talent.
© Copyright: (ELG60)/M.W.P. 2015
The most profound consciousness-altering music experience was a live show (Grateful Dead @ the Greek Theater June 14, 1985); but, the albums below definitely stretch my head (in a good way) every time I play them.
For unmitigated joy my "go to" is King's Highway by Brian Blade and the Fellowship Band:
For unmitigated joy my "go to" is King's Highway by Brian Blade and the Fellowship Band:
That's another great one for me, too. The first song I heard of theirs was Cure For Pain, and I could tell right away that they were something special. I've been listening to The Night again recently, too.
My world-changing album was The B-52s. My older sister bought the album, and it changed my relationship to music. Each track exists on its own planet. And yet all the planets seem to be in the same solar system.
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So, so many over the years, likely starting with (as a whole album) GD's Steal Your Face.
Lately, Ghost Poet's I Grow Tired But Dare Not Fall Asleep, both Claypool-Lennon Delirium albums, and Cecil Taylors' Conquistador have been musical epiphanies that I am still processing.
Lately, Ghost Poet's I Grow Tired But Dare Not Fall Asleep, both Claypool-Lennon Delirium albums, and Cecil Taylors' Conquistador have been musical epiphanies that I am still processing.
I bought The Allman Brothers Live at Fillmore East and Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs when they were released on vinyl in their day, my first were the pink-label Capricorn originals, and Eric's set on Atlantic. I've continuously owned them in the many formats continuously since then, and thankfully have the later Tom Dowd remixed CD's, to me the best of them all.
I doubt the ABB originated the 'jam band' format, stretching songs way out was common then, but where so many bands seemed to just noodle around them, the ABB took them apart and re-assembled them with a sense of power I rarely sensed in others. That it was so authentically Southern-sounding and blues-based with a little more certain authenticity because of where they came from spoke to me. Layla, had this feeling as well, but the addition of Duane Allman to the proceedings anchored it in a way to where these two projects have always been linked somehow in my mind.
I'd never say any music was 'mind altering', but it's surely cast a large shadow in my internal list of influences.
I doubt the ABB originated the 'jam band' format, stretching songs way out was common then, but where so many bands seemed to just noodle around them, the ABB took them apart and re-assembled them with a sense of power I rarely sensed in others. That it was so authentically Southern-sounding and blues-based with a little more certain authenticity because of where they came from spoke to me. Layla, had this feeling as well, but the addition of Duane Allman to the proceedings anchored it in a way to where these two projects have always been linked somehow in my mind.
I'd never say any music was 'mind altering', but it's surely cast a large shadow in my internal list of influences.
In early 70's I was playing Stooges/The 5/Cooper etc. what I think of as Detroit music (just my opinion). I bought a John Lee Hooker Album on a cheap reissue label, it had Boogie Children,Crawlin' King Snake, I'm In the Mood, and more, what I think of as his early good stuff. Just knocked me out.
