Tokyo Jihen introduced me to Ned Doheny with a blistering cover of “Give It Up for Love”. Doheny’s original is far mellower but epitomizes his blue-eyed soul. This album wasn’t a success at the time, but the collector’s market all but demanded a reissue.
Soundtrack, Schoolhouse Rock: Grammar Rock
When I was a kid, I dug the Schoolhouse Rock shorts between cartoons because they were catchy. As an adult, I find the Schoolhouse Rock songs rather sophisticated. Strip the didacticism from the songs, and you get pop music every bit as durable as anything in the American songbook.
PJ Harvey, 4-Track Demos
I have a TASCAM four-track recorder from 1991 that still works, but I’ve never really perceived it as a very robust tool. Then I heard this album, and I wonder if I can push it’s capabilities. I’m nowhere near the performer of Polly Jean, though.
Mr. Bungle, The Raging Wrath of the Easter Bunny Demo
My interest in Mr. Bungle pretty much started and ended with the self-titled debut, although I did own California for a brief time. But I couldn’t pass up hearing the band’s earliest work re-recorded with Slayer’s Dave Lombardo and Anthrax’s Scott Ian.
Propellerheads, Decksandrumsandrockandroll
Propellerheads was one and done, but Decksandrumsandrockandroll was good enough to garner a Mercury Prize nomination. My introduction to the band happened in a gay bar in Chicago.
Fischerspooner, #1
I don’t really care for the album cover, but it doesn’t take away from the music.
Camouflage, Methods of Silence
For some reason, I had it in my head that this album was boring compared to Voices and Images, but I was mistaken.
The Studio One compilations planted a notion that maybe I didn’t hate reggae music after all. My coworkers at Waterloo Records would play these compilations, and I would find myself liking what I heard. Dawn Penn’s “No No No” left a particular impression, but many years would pass before I learned the song’s title. The only reggae music I heard growing up was sifted through a Hawaiian music filter, and I didn’t like it.
Robyn, Body Talk, Pt. 1
OK, fellow gays, I understand why you all love Robyn now.
The Faint, Danse Macabre
I stocked so many copies of this album during my Waterloo shifts, I got sick of it, having never heard a single note. If it’s that popular, it had to suck, right? Maybe in my more judgmental days …
I spent years filing The Dismemberment Plan’s albums at Waterloo Records, and I don’t think I ever listened to their music. So I picked up Change at the thrift store purely out of curiosity. Listening to this album transported me back to those record store days in the early 2000s.
The Ordinaires, One
I owned this album on cassette, and I actually liked it at the time. The only problem was I liked a lot of other albums at the same time a bit more. In a crunch for cash, I sold it. But the band’s cover of Led Zeppelin’s “Kashmir” has haunted me ever since. So I picked it up on vinyl at the Northwest Record Show, then eventually on CD.
Anton Bruckner, Symphonies Nos. 1-9 (Staatskapel Dresden, Eugene Jochum)
I had an unofficial goal of collecting Bruckner symphonies on my visits to thrift shops until this budget boxed set showed up at Lifelong. ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED! I learned about Bruckner in college, but I didn’t feel compelled to explore his work because of a joke: he wrote nine symphonies at one time, or one symphony nine times.
Soundtrack, Death Note
I’ve been dragging my feet on getting this soundtrack for nearly a decade now, but what finally spurred me to take action was a vinyl reissue from Tiger Lab.
Gary Numan, The Pleasure Principle
I bugged my mom to buy me the 7-inch single of “Cars” when I was 8 years old, but by the time I started collecting on my own 5 years later, Gary Numan felt like ancient history. The Pleasure Principle has grown in stature since then, so it was high time I followed up on that single purchase.
Clipse, Lord Willin’
Yeah, I went through a Neptunes phase in the early 2000s, but this album slipped through my grasp. 2002 was a fruitful year in music, so it faced a lot of competition.
Billie Eilish, WHEN WE ALL FALL ASLEEP, WHERE DO WE GO?
Now that everyone else has published their best of 2019 lists, I get to play catch up with everything I’ve been ignoring. So far, only Billie Eilish has managed to punch through.
Peter Gabriel, Us
I probably wouldn’t have come around to this album if I hadn’t run across Secret World Live first. Us got middling reviews, but I find it hits more than it misses.
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