Music Banter - Your favourite albums and what they mean to you

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So I've been putting this thread off for a while just because I felt I was going to end up writing too much. I'll try to be as brief though relevant as possible.

Tommy James & The Shondells - "Crimson & Clover"

One of my very first LPs; I was 16. The album sparked a lifelong obsession with psychedelic music (and the Shondells). It still remains a record I turn to for comfort, or when I just need to feel a little groovier than usual. I plan to get a tattoo having something to do with the title track (or the album as a whole) eventually. In short, it changed my reality and just really taught me how to groove.

Fleetwood Mac - "Rumours"

This album stirs up half a million emotions every time I hear it. It's the album that got me through when I was addicted to drugs and living in Cincinnati. "Gold Dust Woman" will always remind me of the mother of someone I was very close to, who really messed my heart up. Did she make you cry, make you break down, shatter your illusions of love? It was my first time left to my own devices and I really screwed up. Tell me, is it over now? Do you know how to pick up the pieces and go home? I ended up essentially being "returned" like a defective toy.

Carpenters - "Close to You"

My love for Karen Carpenter is without words. Her voice brings tears to my eyes just because of how much I absolutely love her, and how much it breaks my heart that she's gone. This record kept me company for a long time. It's like a worn blanket. Familiar, comforting, and a little bit shabby but that makes it even better. Many difficult times were worked through from the sheer power of this album's ability to help me cry it out, while essentially healing my heart.

Simon & Garfunkel - "Sounds of Silence"

This record came to me when I was very young. It will remind me of the last innocent summer I'd spent with myself. It will always remind me of my first real heartache. Whenever I hear it, I feel innocent and virtuous. I feel warm. It took me many years before I could listen to it without crying or feeling sorry for myself (especially when "Kathy's Song" would come on). Now it's just another album, with new and improved powers.

Pink Floyd - "Animals"

The importance of this album is sort of new to me. It never meant half as much to me as it did during the time I spent marching with the Occupiers in California. I learned a lot about what I hated about dishonest, greedy, deceptive people. I could put meaning to my hurt feelings, caused by irresponsible employers and authority figures I felt I could trust. In my resignation letter from my last job, I included these lyrics from "Dogs" - You have to be trusted by the people that you lie to, so that when they turn their backs on you, you'll get the chance to put the knife in.

Genesis - "Invisible Touch"

This is sort of a weird one, but this album holds a ridiculous amount of importance with me. It was the soundtrack to the later years of my childhood, and the album that got me into Genesis. It got me into synth-driven, proggy music. I can't exactly explain it. I was especially impressed by the story told in "Domino". I'm still astounded by it.

Sparks - "Indiscreet"

This is the album that saved my life. It changed the way I looked at life, at music, at just about everything. The power of lyrics, the wit, the charm. Everything about this album was enough to pull me out of the haze I was into at the time. I went clean from all drugs, started eating again, didn't sleep 17 hours a day anymore, and I found that I had a new passion in life. My obsession with Sparks led me to enjoy a long list of similar acts from the 70s. This album essentially breathed new life into me.

Roxy Music - "Avalon"

This is an album that has an entire landscape to me. It's like stepping into another world. I listen to it when I need to escape from whatever anxiety I'm feeling. From the lush orchestration to the meticulous melodies, "Avalon" is a masterpiece. I plan to immortalize my allegiance to Roxy Music (not a whole lot of people profess to be fans of theirs, it's weird) in the form of a tattoo, but I haven't figured it out just yet. I'm not sure what else to say about this one. It's just one of the greats of my collection; nothing else to it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Christian Benteke (Post 1360144)

I'll go with this one as I reckon I can describe it the best. You guys are much better reviewers and writers than I am though.

http://wearesme.co.uk/wp-content/upl..._da_corner.jpg

Dizzee Rascal - Boy In Da Corner

Back when this came out, I was a Hip-Hop fan and only really listened to the mainstream Americans. I was familiar with the Garage thing happening in the UK at the time (particularly Oxide & Neutrino and So Solid) and I even liked some of it and bought the music but it was quite one dimensional and to be honest the MC's were shit, people were still spitting with American accents around this time, that's all there really was then. And then Dizzee came along with his high pitched, chirpy Cockney accent.

A mate had sent me
I Luv U over MSN that summer and I remember thinking 'WTF is this?'. It was being labeled as Garage but sounded nothing like it, or anything I'd heard before (or since actually.) The content was fresh and real, as opposed to the predictable shit that you'd already heard on Garage a thousand times over (clubs, champagne, girls, etc.) Dizzee was rawer than everyone else before him. And it was hard. It was a track that exploded out of nowhere, everybody rated it, it didn't get to number 1 but it was played everywhere. I think it's comparable to something like Anarchy In The UK in the way that it crossed over because of how shocking and abrasive it was.

This album's content is pretty much the polar opposite to the sort of thing that Garage MC's had done up until then. Tracks like Jezebel and Brand New Day... when you're a teenager at that time it's easy to relate to these tracks, it was the ugly side to the same culture Garage music encapsulated. We all knew a girl in the ends like the one in Jezebel and Dizzee's self expression on Brand New Day was concise and emotive; anyone who has been in a similar position will have felt like that at some point when you're growing up, it was a representation of you. 'Big shout to the boy who thinks he's a don, you're looking at your Avirex thinking you're a don' is a perfect description of how cocky and confrontational you can be at this point and how pointless a lot of teenage squabbling is when you're in school or in the ends. When I listen to the lyrics on this a lot of it reminds me of the people around me and myself, being a dickhead on the back of the bus, nicking phones and a load of other shit. That's exactly what was going on then and Dizzee is talking about it.

Everything on the album is composed and produced by a 16-17 year old Dizzee. The beats are all his with the exception of Fix Up, Look Sharp and Jus' A Rascal which were both co-produced. The production is completely unique, it's raw (I've had Americans tell me it sounds half finished) but it is meant to be that way, it's not supposed to sound polished, it's Grime music. There are no complex rhyming schemes on here or pretentious fast flows because he doesn't need to do it (other than on the last verse of Jus' A Rascal), he is succinct and he does not waste a word.

And it was actually Grime. In a time where the term 'Grime' has been used as a blanket term for any British rapping and the genre has lost it's identity, this production with it's warped bass, 'pots and pans' kicks and snares and Nokia 3310-esque melodies is the epitome of the Grime sound. Since then, it's all watered down and merged with Hip-Hop, artists now attempt to crossover to achieve the success Dizzee achieved with this album, success he achieved by being particularly aggressive and creative.

So that's my opinion on Boy In Da Corner, the undisputed peak of a genre and a genuine gem in a scene full of utter shit and creatively bankrupt dickheads. Regardless of your opinion on Grime (it's shit btw) this is an album I think anyone can appreciate.

Cheers.

Nice review man. I've always dug Mike Skinner's stuff as the pinnacle of British Urban Music, but I also enjoy this album.

Aimee Mann - Lost In Space

http://m2.i.pbase.com/o2/04/877304/1...74_500x500.jpg

THIS will be my next album review. I put this in a little portable CD player in September of 2002 and finally took it out sometime in 2004. I'm quite serious.

I will discuss this album in length in an upcoming review.