5-10-15-20 (Your Music Through The Years)

Aron

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A couple of us were kicking around an idea in the Wilco thread about music that could essentially serve as the soundtrack for your 20's. That reminded me of the feature that Pitchfork runs from time to time called "5-10-15-20", where they have artists talk about song and/or album selections from the various stages in their life. They have them start at 5 years old, and then go in 5 year increments up to their present age. Thought it might be kind of a fun exercise for this forum. Again, I've seen people do songs, albums or a combination of both. Also, you don't have to write essays. I just happen to like to write little essays. It would be cool to see a little blurb at least for each entry. Feel free to do video clips if you want to.

5) "The Devil Went Down To Georgia" - The Charlie Daniels Band -- I grew up in Houston, TX, and in the late 70's and early 80's, country music was kind of the order of the day. The film "Urban Cowboy" had yet to see the light of day, but there were plenty of Urban Cowboys already out there in real life. I didn't really have any albums of my own, other than Disney and Star Wars type records. My parents had albums, and we would listen to them from time to time, but at this point they were rocking 8-Tracks. I liked the Charlie Daniels 8-Track because it was orange. "The Devil Went Down To Georgia" instantly caught my ears though. A cool song that I still like to this day. In my earlier years, I probably liked it because Daniels emphatically says "You son of a b*tch" in the song. I'm sure early on everyone was probably scrambling to keep me from hearing that part.

10) "Born In The U.S.A." - Bruce Springsteen -- 1984 was a huge year for music superstars. There are so many great songs and albums from that year, but, Bruce kind of owned 1984 with the "Born In The U.S.A." album. I was pretty naïve at the time, and I remember going into Sound Warehouse and asking for "the Bruce Springsteen cassette". The employee replied, "Which one?". I had no idea there was more than one. I had never heard of him until that album came out. I've since made up for that. The production may be a bit dated on certain tracks, but the songs themselves still hold up.

15) "Technique" - New Order -- This one was easy. In the late 80's I got really into New Wave groups, and New Order was far and away my favorite. I still hold them in very high regard. They managed to make melancholy sounding music that was synth based that you could dance to. I thought that was pretty cool. I saw them on this tour, and it was kind of my first concert on my own.

20) "Mighty Joe Moon" - Grant Lee Buffalo / "Unplugged In New York" - Nirvana -- Hard to pick one album or song from this era, as it was during my college years, and music was a huge part of my life at this point. I got into Grant Lee Buffalo because Michael Stipe declared their debut album "Fuzzy" his favorite for the year it was released. "Mighty Joe Moon" is even better, in my opinion. There were certainly bigger albums that came out that year that I liked too, but I'll always associate "Mighty Joe Moon" with that period in my life. I still love Grant Lee Phillips' voice. I had to tack on Nirvana's "Unplugged" album too. Nirvana had meant a lot to me in the previous 2 years or so, and when they abruptly came to an end, there was a bit of a void. The release of the "Unplugged" album helped provide a bit of closure, and it remains a special performance in my mind.

25) "Midnite Vultures" - Beck -- At this point, I'm officially a worker bee. A cog in the workforce machine. But I'm still young enough to stay up late at times, hang out with friends during the week, and enjoy the slow jam musings of a white dude named Beck, who clearly had a bigger Prince fixation than any of us ever knew. Not his best album, but maybe his most fun album. And that was kind what it was all about at this point.

30) "Funeral" - Arcade Fire -- The party's over a bit. Pressure is creeping in at work. People are getting more serious, and the music is too at times. Not much to say here. "Funeral" remains a classic album that I enjoy to this day. I saw them on an extremely hot day at the Austin City Limits Festival in support of this album, and they were incredible.

35) "Actor" - St. Vincent -- I was crushing hard on Annie Clark when this album came out, but it helped that the record was so good. I saw her play a small club here in Austin on this tour, and as I watched her play, I knew she was never going to play a venue that small in town again. I continue to be fascinated by her work and her collaborations. "Marrow" is still a jam too.

40) "They Want My Soul" - Spoon -- When I was in college, I had a friend tell me I needed to check out this local band called Spoon. She added, "They sound like the Pixies". I promptly bought "Telephono", and started my journey with Britt Daniel and company. So, in my 40th year on this big blue marble, Spoon released "They Want My Soul", and I'm still blown away by how consistently great that band is on record. I still don't think they ever really sounded all that much like the Pixies though.

45) "In Two" - Moving Panoramas -- Easily my favorite album from start to finish in years. A lot of growth from their first record, which is also excellent, but has a similar tone and feel throughout. This one has more sonic variety, and the songs just work perfectly for me. I've always been a sucker for shoegaze, and the MP take on the dream pop/shoegaze sound is right in my wheelhouse. They add in a little pedal steel here and there, which is a little different, but also ties it back to Texas in a way. I don't recall a time where my favorite song on a record has changed as often as it has with this release. And I don't recall an album that I have listened to all the way through as many times as I have "In Two". Even some of my all time favorite records have skippable tracks, or one that doesn't grab me. I have yet to tire of any song on this album, and the one tune that I wasn't quite as over the moon about after the first few listens I've done a total 180 on.
 
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This was my "If I can only grab one post to take with me in the event of a fire" post. I know it wasn't the most popular thread, but I liked having a longer form thread for those of us that like to get a little wordier.
Yes! I even called out this thread in my Enoch interview. It's the best.
 
I did mine with songs instead of whole albums:

5) "The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill" - The Beatles: I was brought up on the holy trinity of Jesus, Baseball, and The Beatles. I never "discovered" the Beatles, because their entire discography has been the background music of my life, but particularly my early childhood. My dad plays a little rhythm guitar, and he would play and sing Beatles songs in addition to playing the records all the time. When singing with/for us, he often emphasized the sillier songs that he thought we'd get a kick out of. This could have as easily been "Rocky Raccoon," as he played both basically any time the guitar was out, and he gave me a toy raccoon and named it "Rocky" when I was small; but Bungalow Bill stands out as the song my brothers and I couldn't get enough of. We'd shake our heads back and forth as hard and fast as we could--a sort of horizontal head banging--as he played it. We hollered along with chorus. We made up weird alternative lyrics in our day-to-day play time. All the children sing, indeed.

10) "Love is Strange" - Mickey & Sylvia/The Dirty Dancing Soundtrack: My friends were obsessed with Dirty Dancing the year I was in 4th grade--my parents were sympathetic to my position as the only one who hadn't seen it and watched it with me, fastforwarding the parts they thought were too sexy for a 9 year-old. For my 10th birthday in 1988, one of my friends taped a copy of the soundtrack for me (the B side of the tape was finished with as much of Tiffany's eponymous album as would fit) and I listened to that tape constantly for the next year. "Love is Strange" was my favorite part of the soundtrack and the movie, especially the whole cutesy little "how do you call your loverboy?" dialogue in the middle. But that whole soundtrack was MY LIFE in 1988. Yes, the movie and soundtrack were released in 1987, but my friends and I didn't move on from it for a couple years. 10 year-old girls are loyal.

15) "Linger" - The Cranberries: I taped this song off the radio and would flip back to MTV frequently while watching television in the hopes of catching the video (without being caught watching MTV). I basically wanted to be Dolores, and I loved to sing with her. My love only grew through high school with the release of No Need to Argue, but even hearing "Linger" today takes me back to the burgundy striped t-shirts, the 501's and flannel shirts stolen from my dad's closet, and the faux docs of my 15 year-old self.

20) "Ænima" - Tool: I listened to so much music in college. I listened to more Fleetwood Mac, Ani DiFranco, and Korn than I listened to Tool, but when I think of being 20, I think of sitting in my dorm room, lit only by a dozen verboten candles, with the windows open, blasting "Ænima" as I got ready to go out. I broke up with my boyfriend a month or two before my 20th birthday, and gave up all of our mutual friends to make a clean break (a habit I would continue throughout my life). I felt so free and angry and relieved. I remember putting on makeup and lotioning every inch of my body and blasting out my eardrums with Tool. Fucking great album. Fucking great song.

25) "the recognition scene" - The Mountain Goats: I turned 25 6 weeks before the end of my third year teaching 11th grade English. Fresh out of my second major romantic relationship, by then I knew teaching wasn't for me, and I wasn't going to return in the fall. Late that summer I spent a month in Germany with my best friend. I got a couple jobs in late fall and spent most of my 25th year working easy jobs and hanging out drinking, smoking, and listening to music with my 3 best dudes. We listened to a lot of Mountain Goats, Modest Mouse, and The Mars Volta, but by spring I couldn't get the chorus of this song out of my head whenever I was hanging out smoking cigarettes and watching them play chess or read Bukowski aloud or one up each other with offensive jokes.
I'm gonna miss you when you're gone.
I'm gonna miss you when you're gone.

I knew I had to shake things up or I could lose 5 more years in the blink of an eye, just hanging out on balconies, smoking cigarettes, drinking wine, listening to music. So 6 weeks after turning 26 I packed my car and moved to San Diego.

I'm gonna miss you when you're gone.
I'm gonna miss you when you're gone.


30) "Into the Open" - Heartless Bastards: I moved back to San Jose in 2008, right before my 30th birthday, capping off another bad relationship and a lot of chaos. Turns out I would only be there a year before getting married and moving back to San Diego, so I was basically only there for my 30th year. Sheesh, in retrospect I had some big changes at the 5 year marks. The album (All This Time) had been out a couple years, but it just kept feeling more and more relevant. I adopted this song as kind of my theme song around this time. Still one of my favorite bands, still my personal anthem today.

35) "Sweet Baby James" - By James Taylor, as sung by me: I had my daughter when I was 35. I sang this song as a lullabye throughout my harrowing pregnancy, while cuddling her in the NICU, and almost every night of her first year. Is that cheating? Because I listened to a lot of Shovels & Rope and Neko Case and Colin Hay and Amanda Palmer that year too, but they don't stand out the same way.

40) "Smoke Signals" - Phoebe Bridgers: Man, what a year this has been. I am in love with the album this song is on, and the whole thing is so powerful and quiet and perfect and good. I've played the whole album endlessly, but this song is of particular importance to me. I share a lot here, but not all stories are mine to tell, so I'll just say that out of an album of songs that are meaningful to me, "Smoke Signals" first pulled me through a darkness, and then helped me love someone else in their own darkness. Music is magic. Music connects us.
 
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5) "Downtown" by Petula Clark and "Blue Velvet" by Bobby Vinton
I don't really remember my parents listening to the radio much. They had an 8-track player with maybe 10 or so albums. Mostly Christian rock, and the albums that had the two songs listed above. My parents were very religious so we were not allowed to dance., but we would "ice skate" in the living room to these songs. Ha! Loophole! I know they liked "old school" country music.

10) "Karma Chameleon" Culture Club
I wasn't listening to music at home, but did get some pop culture when staying at friends' houses. I remember bouncing on one of those exercise things popular in the 80s to "Karma Chameleon" at a friends house. Madonna was everywhere, and "Thriller" was still huge.

15) Wild! - Erasure
By this point, my parents had lightened up on the religion and I did get a radio at 13 and totally got into synth pop. New Order, Depeche Mode, Erasure, Pet Shop Boys, The Cure...if it was from Europe, it was for me. At the time I hated (with a capital H) good old fashioned rock and roll. Not really because of the music, but because I wanted to disassociate from my peers. I loved Erasure and had a huge 3 x 6 poster from this album on my wall. I "borrowed" my sisters Technique cassette. This was also a very important album for me, but I didn't want to copy @Aron.

20) Dummy - Portishead
By 1994, grunge was in full swing and for the most part I didn't care for it. I still into electronic music. Then I read a review of "Dummy" in SPIN and decided to pick up the album. This album was a revelation to me. My male best friend and I would hang out and listen to this album and play some strategy game with warlocks. I think it was a precursor to World of Warcraft, but I really can't remember. This is the year I started to put the pieces together and figure out I was gay.

25) Play - Moby
I was still into electronic music and loved Moby, but was also branching out into more folk style music. By now I had a "real" job and was making decent money. I went to any Indigo Girls concert in a 300 mile radius. I went to the Newport Folk Festival about this time and generally had a great time being a carefree 20 something.

30) Scissor Sisters - Scissor Sisters
Looking at my iTunes, most of the albums from this time period that I liked were by bands that were LGTBQ. Le Tigre, Tegan & Sara, Scissor Sisters. This was the first appearance of Craig Armstrong for me with his Piano Works album. I also loved The Killers. I get the sense that I didn't listen to much music in this time period. Life gets in the way sometimes.

35) Silent Shout - The Knife
Still listening to mostly electronic music. Silent Shout by The Knife pulled me back into discovering new music. Really loved that album. Also discovered M83 and Dead Cities album.

40!) Dear Sister - Claire Lynch Band
Last year or so, I've been getting into bluegrass and more organic styles of music. I still love synths, but appreciating other styles of music. In my line of work, I can listen to music while working. When I was 25, it was techno music, which would kill me now. I've been listening to neo-classical/minimalist and film scores. I feel like the next step is regular classical and then I'm officially old

45) Alvvays - Antisocialites
Love their sound and this album really crystalizes their sound/vision. I could listen to it anytime/anywhere. One of the defining moments of 45 will be the loss of my younger brother. I've been revisiting all of the music we used to obsess over. He always tried to get me into Hooverphonic but it never clicked until it was too late to tell him.
 
25) "the recognition scene" - The Mountain Goats: I turned 25 6 weeks before the end of my third year teaching 11th grade English. Fresh out of my second major romantic relationship, by then I knew teaching wasn't for me, and I wasn't going to return in the fall. Late that summer I spent a month in Germany with my best friend. I got a couple jobs in late fall and spent most of my 25th year working easy jobs and hanging out drinking, smoking, and listening to music with my 3 best dudes. We listened to a lot of Mountain Goats, Modest Mouse, and The Mars Volta, but by spring I couldn't get the chorus of this song out of my head whenever I was hanging out smoking cigarettes and watching them play chess or read Bukowski aloud or one up each other with offensive jokes.
I'm gonna miss you when you're gone.
I'm gonna miss you when you're gone.

I knew I had to shake things up or I could lose 5 more years in the blink of an eye, just hanging out on balconies, smoking cigarettes, drinking wine, listening to music. So 6 weeks after turning 26 I packed my car and moved to San Diego.

I'm gonna miss you when you're gone.
I'm gonna miss you when you're gone.

oh, okay, fine. I love you. I see how it is.

This is my personal mountain goats 25, I should come back to this thread and do the whole deal.



"I'm coming home / I'm coming home"
 
Excited that the new forum may yield some new entries (and updates to previous posts) in this thread. Also, I'm super excited that I was finally able to capitalize the "Y" in the "Your" from the thread title. I was never able to edit that to correct it on the old forum, and it drove me absolutely crazy. Yeah, I've got issues...who doesn't?
 
I never saw this thread on the other forum! such a great idea. I’ll come up with mine and update this post!

EDIT:
Going individual songs instead of albums...
I’m trying to not play revisionist history and stay true to the tastes of my past-self

5 (94ish):
I was raised on Disney and this wonderful song from the end of the disney dark ages was always one of my favorites. I revisited the movie not too long ago and it’s not great, especially when you consider the films released immediately after it. But the song definitely holds up.

10 (99ish):

Tubthumper was the first cd I ever bought and I wore that sucker out. You couldn’t escape this song in the late 90s and that was especially true in our house.

15 (04ish):

Brand New was my favorite band through most of high school and Deja Entendu was the album I listened to the most. They were the first band I ever listened to that I shared a mutual appreciation for with other people. The first time I bonded with others over music.

20 (09ish):

Thanks to Last.FM, I actually have the data to back this up. I first learned of Manchester Orchestra, when I saw them open for Brand New in 2007. They quickly became one of my favorites and have remained one of my favorites since then.

25 (14ish):



Colony House’s debut record was my favorite thing released that year and I listened to it a looootttt. Pretty standard indie rock/pop, but the lyrics are filled with so much hope and light.

30 (now):

I’ve fallen in love with the sisters from Joseph in the last few years and this is my most listened to song. Simple instrumentation with incredible vocals and lyrics that help wash away anxiety. Their upcoming album is one of my most anticipated of the year. See them live if you get the chance. These girls can SING.
 
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I wasn't always this pretentious.

5) "Shaddap You Face" - Joe Dolce. What a way to ruin a party! My Floridian self was obsessed with the song and wore that 45 out. There was something about it that appealed to my natural theatricality...

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Go figure. I loved staring at that rainbow.

10) Dirty Dancing Soundtrack - Various. Time to get serious here. This album was everything to me. Patrick Swayze, the swayziest of them all, had a song! My family went on a vacation to North Carolina just to see this bridge:

A5B3F3BF-B082-4753-896C-931BBEAB4CE9.jpeg

(But let's not ignore the most important aspect of this phenomenon: without this movie, my pre-teen adolescent self would not be doing the lambada at parties with the bad kids.)

15) "Runaway Train" - Soul Asylum. This song was a very important springboard, launching me into my emotionally unstable mid-teens when I listened to music on my discman with ESP (electronic skip protection) while crying uncontrollably at the sorrows of the world from my privileged place. There were missing children in this world people! Wake up! (For those of you who are not in the U.S. we had a very memorable music video for this song about missing children.)

20) It's Hard To Find A Friend - Pedro The Lion. YES IT IS, PEDRO! More crying on my headphones here, but now in Chicago. David Bazaan was singing to me twice! One voice in each ear! There's really not much more to say.

25) Black Cherry - Goldfrapp. Honestly everything vapour wave can just take a seat for a second. I picked up this CD at Amoeba Records, which didn't really have records back then, in Hollywood. I saw collages, Alison in hawt makeup, a jaunty hat, a wolf, my queerness sitting there right in front of me. And when I listened, I was a fan for life as we all should be. And later in my life, when my best friend got me this on vinyl, I felt really, really seen:

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30) Flavors of Entanglement - Alanis Morissette. For reasons I won't go into, this was a very difficult year for me. I'm not sure what to say except Alanis gave me what I needed.

35) Loved Me Back To Life - Celine Dion. That's right. Another hard year and Celine was my second momma. Plus there's a duet with Ne-Yo.

40) Honey - Robyn. This one really isn't fair because so much of my music taste developed during these last five years. But I'm going with Honey by Robyn. It's appropriate. It's mature. It's rich. It's sexy. It's weird. It's open. And it is not afraid.

26F98B7A-E1E8-46D9-8A56-B5560675E86F.jpeg
 
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I was mostly a rap kid but this looks like fun!


5) Creedence Clearwater Revival - Bad Moon Rising ... my mom was a big CCR fan and they used to play it with like a flinstones cartoon or something in the early 80s? I have vivid memories of watching that... I think.

10) Maestro Fresh-Wes - Symphony In Effect .. first rap cassette I ever owned. Still holds a dear place in my heart. true pioneer in the canadian rap game and one of the best fast rappers ever.

15) Smif-N-Wessun ... great NYC hip-hop with a heavy Jamaican influence.. perflect blend of street rap and weed smoke for 15 year old me.

20) Buck65 - Man Overboard / Cannibal Ox - The Cold Vein ..,. two sides of my love for hip-hop expressed on basically polar opposites of the spectrum.

25) Bloc Party - Silent Alarm ... had been dating a girl who introduced me to the wide world of indie rock for a few years at this point when this record dropped. It was either this or a White Stripes record but my favorite material from them was prior to 2004.

30) Clipse - Hell Hath No Fury ... everything they were doing at the time was great. that and I can't really think of what else I was listening to at the time.. I'm sure there may be better options but this is the first one that comes to mind

35) I don't think I could pinpoint one record for this era but just really got into African / Zamrock records.

40) Griselda.
 
Fun! And I guess a good way to introduce myself properly! So here goes!

5) Boney M -Oceans of Fantasy. This was the one album I always dug out of my big sisters record collection. I just loved the cover! Remember feeling kinda dissapointed when I actually heard the record. Had expected something a bit more epic I guess. But I danced to it anyway.
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10) Bruce Springsteen - Born in the USA. Pretty hard to avoid this in 1985, and I especially loved the title track. today I'm a huge Springsteen-fan/nerd, and these years laid the foundation for that.
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15) Anthrax - State of Euphoria. Just before I got blown away by the alternative explosion with Nirvana, Sonic Youth, Pixies and all of those in 91-92, I was a skatepunk kid who mostly listened to hardcore punk and metal. This album was like the perfect amalgam of those two genres.
126

20) Elastica - s/t. Britpop was pretty much unavoidable in th mid-90s, and I loved a lot of the bands that came along then. This is a forgotten gem from that era, that still sound as vital and fresh as it did in 95. Need a good reissue of this, as all I got is a worn out CD rattling around in my car, and it's not on Spotify.
128

25) Lucinda Williams - Car Wheels on a Gravel Road. I should probably put Heartbreaker by Ryan Adams here, as that album defined my mid-20s on a more profound level, but I don't want to have anything to do with that dude now, so I pick this masterpiece instead which is equally important. I remember getting this CD for my 24th birthday by my girlfriend, and that we spent the whole winter dreaming of getting motorcycles ("Metal Firecracker") in the summer and just explore the world. That didn't happen. We broke up, but the music remains.
133

30) Lee Morgan - The Sidewinder. My soul searching period where I started to look back and discover the classics in the pop/rock/soul canon. Also got a taste for hip hop and jazz during this period, and this album has been a favourite since then.
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35) The National - High Violet. I never thought I could be this obsessed with a rock band again, but The National just got to me at the exact right time in my life.
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40) Kendrick Lamar - To pimp a butterfly. Technically it came out when I was 41, but it is one of my all time favourite albums so I can't really avoid it here.
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Thats it, who knows what 45 has in store. Still a full year away!
 
Fun! And I guess a good way to introduce myself properly! So here goes!

5) Boney M -Oceans of Fantasy. This was the one album I always dug out of my big sisters record collection. I just loved the cover! Remember feeling kinda dissapointed when I actually heard the record. Had expected something a bit more epic I guess. But I danced to it anyway.
View attachment 122

10) Bruce Springsteen - Born in the USA. Pretty hard to avoid this in 1985, and I especially loved the title track. today I'm a huge Springsteen-fan/nerd, and these years laid the foundation for that.
View attachment 123

15) Anthrax - State of Euphoria. Just before I got blown away by the alternative explosion with Nirvana, Sonic Youth, Pixies and all of those in 91-92, I was a skatepunk kid who mostly listened to hardcore punk and metal. This album was like the perfect amalgam of those two genres.
View attachment 126

20) Elastica - s/t. Britpop was pretty much unavoidable in th mid-90s, and I loved a lot of the bands that came along then. This is a forgotten gem from that era, that still sound as vital and fresh as it did in 95. Need a good reissue of this, as all I got is a worn out CD rattling around in my car, and it's not on Spotify.
View attachment 128

25) Lucinda Williams - Car Wheels on a Gravel Road. I should probably put Heartbreaker by Ryan Adams here, as that album defined my mid-20s on a more profound level, but I don't want to have anything to do with that dude now, so I pick this masterpiece instead which is equally important. I remember getting this CD for my 24th birthday by my girlfriend, and that we spent the whole winter dreaming of getting motorcycles ("Metal Firecracker") in the summer and just explore the world. That didn't happen. We broke up, but the music remains.
View attachment 133

30) Lee Morgan - The Sidewinder. My soul searching period where I started to look back and discover the classics in the pop/rock/soul canon. Also got a taste for hip hop and jazz during this period, and this album has been a favourite since then.
View attachment 139

35) The National - High Violet. I never thought I could be this obsessed with a rock band again, but The National just got to me at the exact right time in my life.
View attachment 140

40) Kendrick Lamar - To pimp a butterfly. Technically it came out when I was 41, but it is one of my all time favourite albums so I can't really avoid it here.
View attachment 141

Thats it, who knows what 45 has in store. Still a full year away!
I love TPAB so much, but it’s release falls perfectly in between the given ages for me that it didn’t make sense to include it on this particular list. Glad to see it represented here though
 
5) Elvis. I don’t have a specific record tied to Elvis. My dad was really into him. One of the few fun memories I have of my dad when I was little was staying home sick from church with him one Sunday and listening to Elvis records all morning. My parents didn’t like The Beatles, but they liked the Rock and Roll of the 50s and nobody more than Elvis.

10) Michael Jackson’s Bad. This album gets overlooked in favor of Thriller and Off the Wall, but Michael Jackson was just as big in the late 80s (and early 90s) as he was in the early 80s. Just watch that early Simpson’s episode for confirmation. For another example, Moonwalker was released in ‘88. Bad was ubiquitous and I was on the bandwagon.

15) Metallica - the black album. My first experience with heavy metal. It was my gateway drug into enjoying the offerings of The Headbangers Ball on MTV.

20) Reel Big Fish - Turn the Radio Off. The ska/punk wave was doing its thing alongside the swing revival of the late 90s. I listened to it all (thanks to Napster and my college roommate) but my favorite was this album.

25) Explosions in the Sky - the Earth is not a cold dead place. A girlfriend got me into this band, along with The Postal Service, Minus the Bear, Appleseed Cast, and a few others.

I didn’t really explore music much after that. I just listened to what was on the top 40 radio. A friend made me a mixtape of old outlaw country, and I became a fan of that. I became nostalgic for the rap music that was in the air in the 90s, although I didn’t like it at the time. I’d catch Blaggards playing at a local bar.

When I turned 40, it dawned on me that I could explore music on my own, without needing my parents, my friends, a significant other, or the radio giving me recommendations. I decided to start collecting vinyl. I didn’t really know much about music, so I started at the beginning, buying some stuff recorded during the 20s, then next month the 30s, then 40s, etc. I also joined a record club to get some more interesting albums that my broad research might gloss over (and because I wanted a de la soul record). And I try to keep an eye out for new releases that I like.
 
I love TPAB so much, but it’s release falls perfectly in between the given ages for me that it didn’t make sense to include it on this particular list. Glad to see it represented here though

Yeah, that is one of the limitations of this format. The five year intervals. For instance, it is insane that a Bob Dylan record doesn't appear in my list considering how important his music has been in my life since my high school years.
 
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