…nor my hip-hugger bellbottoms with the embroidered lightning bolts.
I’m talking about how I got to Z from A in my music listening. Some of the threads are short, some are long, some are convoluted. And I still listen to all of them to this day.
Some links are provided to most of who I’m talking about, for your convenience. They’re underlined. This entire post could be links, but that would be crazy. Look, there are 206 artists in my playlist, with over 4000 songs. These are just the ones I consider most important to me.
The shortest one is probably the first: Steppenwolf. Back in Junior High School, Mike Scipione suggested I buy the Monster album, which I did, and that led me to buying the earlier and later albums, and John Kay’s solo works, and seeing John live as the opportunity presented itself.
Also in JrHS, and playing in rock band, Nancy would bring us songs to cover and a few of them led to other bands I’ve listened to consistently ever since – like Blind Faith (and adjuncts like Cream and Stevie Winwood) and The Guess Who and Grass Roots.
Junior High School was very influential, in general. Barry, the drummer in our band and one of my two best friends, played Brand X’s Moroccan Roll album and the Brand X albums have been in my playlist since then. Oddly enough, Genesis isn’t, despite Phil Collins being in both bands. The school’s band teacher was very jazz-oriented, so Chicago got put into the mix in my head early on.
Somewhere along the line, I started listening to Lou Reed. I assume it was because of hearing Walk on the Wild Side on the radio, but I won’t swear to it. If so, it’s the first of two threads started from radio play. That thread contains ALL the Velvet Underground albums, and ALL the Lou and John Cale solo albums, and those led me to David Bowie via Mott The Hoople when both David and Lou contributed to the All the Young Dudes album, and Nico’s solo albums came into play somewhere along the line…
Even before that, courtesy of the television series, there was The Monkees, then all the albums and including the movie Head. Michael Nesmith’s solo works came after that. They’re all still in my playlist. My wife and I saw Mike in Austin a decade or so ago, and I had seen him decades earlier in Los Angeles at the Whisky. (Weird…Quiet Riot opened for him. That was not a lineup I’d expect. And Quiet Riot brought me to Slade, even though you’d think The Runaways would have. Oh, hey, Cherie Currie is another branch in the threads.)
The other started-by-the-radio thread was Jefferson Airplane/Starship/Grace Slick/Paul Kantner. (At the bottom of the Airplane page are links to the other works of the band members.) WNEW-FM (probably Alison Steele) played Your Mind Has Left Your Body from Baron Von Tollbooth and the Chrome Nun (Grace Slick, Paul Kantner, and David Freiberg) and I was like whoa, and immediately bought the album. Which, of course, made me go out and buy the Jefferson Airplane albums, and the various solo/combination albums like Sunfighter (Paul and Grace), Blows Against The Empire (Paul and “Jefferson Starship”, but not the one you’re thinking of), and Grace’s Manhole album.
Then college happened and the threads got tangled.
In the college bookstore, I was looking through the record albums and Roxy Music Country Life caught my eye. Well, how could it not? The cover featured two fairly undressed young women.
Well. I had to get the previous Roxy albums, too, didn’t I? And who played in the band? Bryan Ferry, Brian Eno, Phil Manzanera, and Andy Mackay.
I bought all the Roxy Music albums, of course, as they came out. Bryan’s solo albums are not really to my usual taste, but enjoyable, and I get loyalty points for buying them. Right?
But Eno’s Here Come the Warm Jets, his first solo album, was perfect. And Phil Manzanera played on it, along with Andy Mackay. And Robert Fripp.
Brian has done a LOT of collaborations over the years, which brought me to Talking Heads, Jon Hassell, Harold Budd, The Penguin Café Orchestra, and others.
I do, of course, have all of Brian’s solo albums. And Phil’s. And Andy’s. And I started looking for Robert Fripp’s work.
I had In the Court of the Crimson King for years, but it never really clicked for me. On the other hand, Robert’s guitar contributions to other artists did. Blondie was one, David Bowie was another. Brian Eno’s continuing teaming up with Robert brought me to the Ambient Music albums, too, of course.
The threads started to get tangled. Or incestuous. Or something.
Phil Manzanera’s album Diamond Head (another perfect album) led to the Quiet Sun Mainstream album, which led to Soft Machine because Robert Wyatt played on both, and now I have all the Soft Machine and Robert Wyatt albums.
Then, of course, Kevin Ayer’s albums had to be purchased because of Soft Machine. But wait! He also had a live album with John Cale, Eno, and Nico called June 1, 1974 which was added to my collection. Do you see how the threads get tangled?
But back to Robert Fripp for a moment… Robert produced and played on three albums back in the late seventies: his own Exposure, Peter Gabriel’s second solo album (“Scratch”), and Daryl Hall’s Sacred Songs album (a big favorite of mine). The three albums were meant to be released more or simultaneously, but RCA shelved Daryl’s album because it was too different from the Hall & Oates albums. “Delayed by dinosaurs”, as Robert put it, so it was released after the other two in the quasi-trilogy.
Oh. Robert got together with Daryl recently on Live From Daryl’s House streaming series (available on YouTube). And, of course, you’re all watching Robert and his wife Toyah Willcox’s Sunday Brunch series on YouTube, right? SO much fun.
Oh. Robert’s later King Crimson albums brought in Adrian Belew, another star in my playlist.
It’s getting too tangled. Let’s break the thread and go to my favorite female performers, and how I found them.
Lisa Dal Bello, or just Dalbello, a Canadian singer/songwriter was introduced to me via Gabriele Turner (the band Nena) when I was living in Berlin. Excellent, excellent songwriter and performer, and is one of my go-to artists when I need a break from the rest. And I’m totally crushing on her, but that’s neither here nor there. She did the English translations for Nena. YouTube has a mini-documentary on it, if you’re interested enough to go looking for it. The album she was the one that started my collection, but whomanfoursays was purchased immediately afterward, then the rest. (The lack of capitalization is Li’s, not mine.)
My other go-to is Sarah McLachlan, and another Canadian, oddly enough. Sarah came my way via the wife of a coworker (along with Jewel, but that was a dead-end after the first album) and I’ve been listening to her ever since. SO much emotion. “Hold On”, from the Fumbling Towards Ecstasy album gives me chills.
I think I’ll break the threads here before I get too tangled up. Maybe a one or two more short ones. Rick Beato, a YouTube creator of things musical, both performance analysis and music theory sent me to Adam Neely, another performer (Sungazer) and music theory-ish teacher on YouTube, and to Mary Spender who also gives music instruction, background of this and that thing musical, and is a singer-songwriter in her own right. Oh. Rick also got me into Tim Henson and Polyphia, for which I’m grateful. Strangely, I have absolutely no idea how I found Rick.
Enough.
Don’t expect to see how any of them influenced the music I create. Maybe a bit of Eno or Harold Budd. Who knows? Music training by osmosis.
P.S. I was just about to post this and then remembered Rachel Sweet and Lene Lovich leading me to all the Stiff Records artists. I’d better hit the post button before I have to go back in and edit everything. Again.