Mark's "15 records that definitely changed my life" from February 21, 2009

(copied from Facebook page)

I’m always late to the party on these kinds of things.. my version has some why to it.
WIXY 1260 http://www.wixy1260.com/

Ok, it’s not a record, but a radio station. When I was 5 I got an AM transistor radio for a Christmas (or birthday – don’t remember) present. The radio was glued to my ear just about 24 hours a day with 1260 on the dial, (except for when the Indians were on, of course). At one point I entered one of the promotional contests and actually got on the air. Wish I had a tape of that! They don’t make stations like this anymore, deeply imbedded in the local community, with local talent, local promotions, and local ads.

The James Gang – I Don’t Have the Time b/w Fred

The first record I ever bought with my own money, from Giant Tiger, for 50 cents. I was 8. I think I listened to it about 50 straight times when I got home. I liked I Don’t Have the Time, but the B side “Fred” blew my little 8 yr old ears away…You can hear the echoes of it in my music to this day.

Credence Clearwater Revival – Proud Mary b/w Born on the Bayou

I danced around to this and sang it endlessly without having any idea it was about a steamboat. The band earned lots more of my quarters over the next couple of years, with Fortunate Son, Green River, Up Around the Bend, and Bad Moon Rising.

Led Zeppelin – II

The first full LP I bought with my own money.. I don’t remember but I think it was around $5. I drove my mom crazy as a 9 yr old singing “Whole Lotta Love” again and again. That riff was stuck in my head like glue. It wasn’t until later that Robert Plant’s singing drove me nuts as well.

David Bowie – Ziggy Stardust

Don’t know what to say about it, other than it was unlike anything I had ever heard, and I listened to it constantly. It made me feel things a 13 year old probably shouldn’t feel.

Mott The Hoople – The Hoople

Having a paper route meant more money available for music buying.. this came out in 1974 but I think I bought it a year later.. smack dab in the middle of puberty.. this one, along with David Bowie’s followup to Ziggy, Aladdin Sane, made me feel funny in my pants.

Crack the Sky – Crack the Sky

Relatively obscure by some standards, but this record actually won Rolling Stone’s record of the year in 1975. It was a natural progression from glam to “classic” rock, and a pretty unique sound… It opened the door for me to other similar bands like Be Bop Deluxe, Roxy Music etc.

Yes – Relayer

I bought other Yes records, but this is the one that I wore the grooves out on. None of my peers got it.. Songs that were 20 minutes long? I was 15 at this time.. an age for me that was full of confusion, self doubt, contrasted with visions of grandeur and possibility. This was a record you had to invest some time in to get to know it.. all those time signature changes, twists and turns, little vocal melodies that came and went, squalls of noise… tremendous cascading buildups followed by smooth pools of quiet reflection. I loved it…

Scorpions – Virgin Killer

Ok.. this is about life-changing records, not necessarily great ones.. This one started my “metal period”.. which lasted from about ’77 – ’80. I was a chubby pimply teen with no prospects of any kind for getting girls, and kinda angry about it. I got my first real job at a Grocery store in ’74 (yes I started working at 14 – had to get a work permit and all that).. and by ‘76 thanks to UFCW I was making around $10 an hour and suddenly had $$ to spend on all kinds of music.. most of which I wasted on Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Scorpions, and other European metal that provided a lot of immediate gratification but grew stale after awhile. My metal obsession made me miss the entire punk revolution, and miss out on being a part of the “cool” crowd of Cle Punk in the late 70’s. This remained an issue in bands I played in later on.. as many of the punk crowd saw me as a Johnny come lately. Of all the types of music I’ve appreciated over the years, this type is the one I’ve least come back to, and a lot of these records sound embarrassingly dated today.. although I do still enjoy certain songs.. The Scorpions’ Coast to Coast or Sails of Charon for instance…

Joy Division – Unknown Pleasures

I was working at Cleveland State’s WCSB in ’79 doing a metal show when my now friend Tim joined the station, and gently but regularly pushed this record on me. At the time I thought punk was garbage. I didn’t respect it as music, and therefore anything remotely associated with “punk” I dismissed out of hand. I could write a long post about this at some point.. but suffice it to say that as I came to know and love this record, my metal obsession began to dissolve, and it opened the door to more and more of the “new wave” to creep in. JD spoke to me more directly and pointedly for where I was in my own life than any rock music had up to that point, and it made me feel like I had found a music that really “belonged” to me. I had bought a drum kit about a year ago and flailed around it a bit, trying to play Bill Bruford with the chops of a raw beginner.. but this record made me realize that you didn’t have to be a virtuoso to write and play good songs. Truly inspirational.

Wire – 154

This one melded the simplicity and atmospheric mood of what I heard in Joy Division with the complexity and melody of some of the earlier classic rock I loved. It brought me back to the 60’s somewhat.. interesting and inventive sounding guitars with really great vocal melodies.. It’s a desert island selection.

The Dream Syndicate – 12” EP (Down There version)

In the spring of 1982 I traveled to San Francisco to visit a teenage friend who had moved out there. It was the first time I had ever flown on a plane and the first time I had ever been out of the state of Ohio. It was a hugely memorable and influential trip for me, not only being in a different city (and SF is about as different as you can get from Cleveland in the U.S.) ..but I was still pretty excited about the “new wave” of music I had found with Joy Division, Wire and all the rest of the new “UK invasion”. I saw the Teardrop Explodes in concert there, and one of the first early shows of Faith No More at the Mabuhay Gardens. They were a pretty different band back then. I knew there was a Rough Trade office in SF and I made sure to stop there, and made other visits in my capacity as a college radio music director to Ralph Records (I distinctly remember a long hallway lined with black garbage bags and black lights) , and various record stores hunting for stuff I could take back to the station. It was at Rough Trade where I was turned on to what was being called the “new psychedelia” on the West Coast. A lot of the British new wave was hearkening back to 60’s stuff but this was a virtual flashback.. Dream Syndicate, Salvation Army, Rain Parade, Green on Red, Gun Club… They were all brand new and there was the excitement of a “movement” evident in the air. I brought a lot of those records back to Ohio and to the airwaves and like to think I played my little part in kick starting their fame in the Midwest! It was a turning point for me as I started to drift away from the UK bands as many of them shifted their focus to the “new disco”… it was perfect timing for me.

Various Artists – They Pelted us with Rocks and Garbage

A pretty diverse and accurate document of the Cleveland Music scene, circa 1984-85. This is the first time I made my own appearance on vinyl, playing drums for the band Riot Architecture. RA was the 2nd band I’d been in, the first (Thermos of Happiness) having gained some local notoriety and infamy as the first local band emulating the British new wav
e..we got equal amounts of scorn from the punk crowd and admiration from the Anglophiles. TOH eventually “released” a cassette of Lo-Fi live and 4T recordings, but they weren’t heard by more than a few people. RA was even less popular. A band with a ton of unrealized potential, we practiced weekly in the basement of my house on 115th st in Cleveland, often shaking loose the plaster from the basement ceiling… our best work was done in the presence of only the 4 of us, unfortunately. A 24 track studio recording of over 10 songs went unfinished, and though there were rumors that guitarist Dave Stitz had some amazing practice tapes in his possession.. these never saw the light of day either.

My Dad is Dead – And He’s Not Gonna Take it Anymore

Is this cheating? It really did change my life. Started me down the road of eventually visiting all 50 states and several countries, playing my music for appreciative and not so appreciative audiences. This record was in the works for a couple of years.. Listening these days, It’s kinda charming in it’s amateurishness. You should have heard the really embarrassing stuff that didn’t make it to this record. The friends I can count on the fingers of one hand know what I’m talking about…

Dursun Ozdil – Yikilmasin Insanlik

In 1989 we got the opportunity to tour Europe (mostly Germany) as part of a Homestead “package” tour with Happy Flowers and Bastro. Bastro had stolen John McEntire from us by this point, but it didn’t matter.. he was a better “fit” with them, .. and with him in the band they totally rocked out more than ever.. Besides, by that point we had found Scotty P, who would return again and again to record and tour with us.. anyway.. it was during this tour upon a visit to a Hamburg train station that I had my first exposure to Turkish music. There’s a large Turkish ex-pat population in Germany, and the train stations were filled with kiosks selling tapes of all kinds. In one particular Kiosk I heard blaring out of a cheap boombox a strange combination of what sounded like Big Black drum machine plus a really droney acoustic guitar and some of the most mournful vocals I’d ever heard.. It was immediately addictive. I didn’t speak any German at the time and the Kiosk owner spoke no English, so we had a comical interaction in which he kept trying to sell me American disco music and I kept trying to convince him that the Turkish stuff was what I really was interested in.. Ultimately I left there with about 10 tapes at the absurdly cheap price of about $2 each. I love the sound of the saz to this day, and thanks to my wife, now own an authentic Turkish saz, which I employed heavily on the upcoming record…

Ok.. well that’s 15, and I’ve run out of time… maybe in another post I’ll list the tons of amazing records I’ve heard since the late 80’s. I’m sure that will include many Pixies records.. our tour with them in 1991 was a highlight of the bands “career”. … In the meantime, pls check out my current LP’s on rotation:

Black Taj – Beyonder
Wilderness – (K)no(W)here
The Fall – The complete Peel sessions
The Lines – Flood Bank (re-issue)
The Independent top 40 of Triangle Bands (if you want to know what’s going on in the Chapel Hill scene these days.. a good place to start.
http://www.indyweek.com/music/121008/tracks/indytop40of2008.zip