That Ten Albums Meme

On March 9, 2020November 22, 2020 By StevenIn Pop Culture4 Comments

For a while now, I’ve been seeing a meme popping up on BookFace and other social media:

List 10 albums that made a lasting impression on you as a TEENAGER, but only one per band/artist.

This came up in a conversation the other day, and I spiraled out, because that’s what my brain does when I start thinking about music. I spent several hours compiling (and repeatedly revising) my own list of albums.

These aren’t all necessarily from my teen years though- I chose to go a slightly different direction, listing albums that were very influential to me throughout my formative years. Each of the titles listed was important to me for different reasons during the parts of my life where I was learning who I am. The oldest album on the list was released when I was two years old, although I didn’t hear it until I was a teenager. The newest release on the list came out in 1999, roughly a month after I finished off my bachelor’s degree. Here they are in release order:

Alice Cooper - Welcome To My Nightmare album cover

Alice Cooper – Welcome To My Nightmare (released March 11, 1975) – By the time I finally heard this album for the first time, I had already graduated high school. This album marked the first time I’d ever heard a song with my name as the title.

That song, “Steven,” is part of a trio of songs that tell a story end to end, in a really fascinating way. I’m also a big fan of Vincent Price’s cameo in the song- to borrow a line from Dana Gould, “he’s my favorite everything!“

Styx – Kilroy Was Here (released February 22, 1983) – In 1983, “Mr. Roboto” was all over the radio, and the sound of it had a sci-fi aesthetic that absolutely appealed to ten-year-old me. This album was released three months before Return of the Jedi hit theaters for the first time, and I was incredibly jazzed for both.

Kilroy Was Here was the first time I had ever really been aware of an entire album having a single story to tell. You never forget your first concept album. The different members of the band play specific characters in the story, and I just thought that was amazing.

I also have a favorite “my brother did that” story about this song- I had been using my little tape recorder, pulling it to the television or the radio to collect the songs that I liked- a precursor to the mix tapes I made later on. One night while my family was gathered together for dinner, I held my trusty tape recorder up to the television while they played the video to Mr. Roboto on “Solid Gold.” About two-thirds of the way into the video, my brother exclaimed, “I finally understand this song.” This was the only version of Mr. Roboto I had on tape for years to come.

Depeche Mode - Some Great Reward album cover

Depeche Mode – Some Great Reward (released September 24, 1984) – While my favorite Depeche Mode album is actually 1990’s Violator, Some Great Reward was my first DM title, and my first exposure to an entire genre of music.

It was in a classroom- I don’t even remember which one now. I don’t remember the name of the guy who first let me hear Depeche Mode on his walkman, but I still remember his spiked up black hair and his so-shiny patent leather boots. He was the first of many, many, many friends who listened to goth, industrial, synthpop, post-punk, and electronic music. He had tapes for his Walkman tape deck with Depeche Mode, The Cure, The The, and a few others. (Side note: Try searching for “The The” in most search engines. Without qualifying words like song titles, it’s an exercise in frustration.) He let me listen to a few songs from this album and I was hooked- and Depeche Mode went into my mental playlist forevermore.

Weird Al Yankovic - Dare To Be Stupid album cover

Weird Al Yankovic – Dare To Be Stupid (released June 18, 1985) – Needless to say, I was already a Weird Al fan when Dare To Be Stupid dropped into stores. Ironically, it was Al’s originals that brought me to his fandom, not his parodies.

I spent my middle school days waiting in the lunch line with Brian and Phil, singing all the songs from “In 3-D,” especially Midnight Star and Nature Trail To Hell. When I got my copy of Dare To Be Stupid, I immediately gravitated to Slime Creatures From Outer Space, This Is The Life, One More Minute, and of course Yoda. To this day, Dare To Be Stupid is a regular feature during my karaoke nights, and I’ve seen Weird Al live several times. The most recent live Weird Al show I attended was just last summer, thirty-five years after the first time I heard one of his amazing polka medleys.

Information Society - Information Society album cover

Information Society – Information Society (released June 21, 1988) – When InSoc dropped their self-titled album, I was regularly attending parent-mandated group therapy, and I listened to this tape over and over again while driving to and from the doctor’s office where my therapy was held.

I practically wore out the tape- I already knew that I loved electronic music, and the theatricality of Kurt Harland, Jim Cassidy, and Paul Robb immediately caught my attention.

It took almost another three decades before I was finally able to see them live- partly because the band broke up after the third album. I purchased every one of their albums, including 1997’s “Don’t Be Afraid,” which was released by Kurt Harland without the rest of the group.

The band members went on to do their own things for a while: Harland writes music and does audio engineering for video games, Cassidy is faculty at Oregon State University, and Robb continued to make music without the Information Society name. They reformed the band in 2006, and I was finally able to catch them live a few years later. I’ve seen them three times now, twice by flying to a show in another state, and it’s a great show every time.

Cyndi Lauper - A Night To Remember album cover

Cyndi Lauper – A Night To Remember (released May 9, 1989) – While “She’s So Unusual” is more widely known (and has bigger sales numbers), A Night To Remember is the album that locked me in as a Cyndi Lauper fan.

This album was originally supposed to include “Hole In My Heart (That Goes All The Way To China)” from the movie soundtrack of Vibes, but when the movie didn’t do well they reworked it. Several of my favorite Cyndi Lauper songs were hilariously never on any of her albums.

In any case, the summer of 1989 was the summer before my senior year of high school, and the music on A Night To Remember spoke to my nascent longing and romanticism in ways that no other music had before. Plus the drums in “I Drove All Night” really slap.

Prince – Batman (released June 20, 1989) – The summer of 1989 saw the release of the first Michael Keaton Batman movie. I had a job that summer as a dishwasher in a Wag’s Restaurant- they no longer exist, and the location where I worked in the River Bridge shopping center in Lake Worth is an IHOP these days.

That summer, I had a Walkman and a bag full of cassette tapes. I would spend time with my high-pressure water spray, and Prince. Or Paula Abdul. Or Cyndi, from the last album I mentioned. Or even Milli Vanilli, before they were discredited.

I’ve been a fan of Prince ever since the first time I heard his music, but when he did the soundtrack to a comic book movie, two of my favorite things in the world commingled. This album is also the source of a joke that I listened to hundreds of times before finally getting it one random afternoon just a few years ago. Yes, it took me nearly thirty years to grok the punchline of this joke. And no I’m not going to tell you which joke.

Erasure – Chorus (released October 14, 1991) – I’ve seen Erasure in concert several times, and while my favorite Erasure tour was absolutely the amazing Nightbird tour around 2005, that wasn’t my favorite album from Andy Bell and Vince Clarke. That honor belongs to Chorus.

This album just saw a thirtieth anniversary release, not in the United States of course, with remasters of the original ten songs, a second disc of remixes, and a third disc containing the entire album performed live in Manchester from 1992. Of course I lapped up the entire thing- Chorus was the soundtrack to my 1992, end to end. The number of memories I have pertaining to people and places around this album cannot be counted. To this day, “Am I Right” is a song that I hum to myself whenever it rains. (Unless I’m singing that other song about rain, that is.)

Toys - Music from the Original Motion Picture Soundtrack album cover

Toys – Music from the Motion Picture Soundtrack (released December 15, 1992) – I don’t get to talk about it much these days, but my first job ever was at a movie theater. Over the years, I’ve worked at five different movie theaters, and in 1992 I was working in a theater that played Toys.

This brilliant Robin Williams movie contained a fantastic cast. (To this day, some of my electronics are named after Joan Cusack’s character.) The soundtrack includes some of the most original and creative music I’ve ever heard, including a few tracks that I go back to over and over again throughout the years. I’m especially fond of “The Closing of the Year,” featuring Wendy and Lisa (who are themselves better known for being part of Prince’s band The Revolution.) I tend to spin up that song on New Year’s Eve, in a sort of personal musical tradition.

I’ve found that a well-curated movie soundtrack can be a thing of beauty and wonder, and this is one of my favorites. (See also: Cool World, The Crow, Mortal Kombat — amazing soundtracks, all.)

VNV Nation – Empires (released in 1999 in Europe, and May 16, 2000 in the US) – While I was a University of Central Florida student in Orlando, there was a stretch of time where I was going out dancing five nights a week. I had a tremendous rotation of clubs that simply is not possible in the city now.

The amazing Embassy Music Hall is a fricking Wal-Mart Grocery now. I can’t remember precisely where Club Zen was, but I think it’s currently called the “Tequila Lounge Club.” Cairo was downtown but it’s not there anymore. The Blue Room? That’s gone too. The only one of the original clubs from that time still standing is Barbarella, which was renamed the Independent Bar and now only has the kind of music I want to dance to once a month, stupidly always on a Monday.

In late 1999, I had just completed my degree, and I was forced to move back to South Florida even though I didn’t want to leave Orlando. VNV Nation was already well played in the kinds of clubs I went to, but when this album dropped, their music was suddenly everywhere. It was the first album in quite a while that I could listen to end-to-end without feeling the urge to skip to something else. For a span of several years in the early 2000s, this type of music- EBM and synthpop- was my most listened to genre. At a time where I was sort of adrift, many of these songs soothed me in a way that I could never really articulate. Even today, when the mood is just-so, this is the kind of music I seek out.

I realized while I was writing this post that with the exception of the soundtrack to Toys, I’ve seen the artists of the other nine albums live. All of them. Most of them I’ve seen more than once. I find that kind of remarkable, but also not very surprising.

Also, I came up with a smaller list during the making of the list above which contains five much more recent albums that I enjoy enough to listen to end-to-end. Just for giggles, here’s those five with absolutely zero additional commentary:

1. Muse – The Resistance (2009)
2. Taylor Swift – 1989 (2014)
3. Peter Cincotti – Metropolis (2012)
4. The Greatest Showman (2017)
5. Alice Merton – Mint (2019)

I listed ten of my most influential albums in this post. Now tell me one of yours!

11/52

Memories are a tricky thing.

On November 7, 2016November 8, 2016 By StevenIn Life At Home8 Comments

I was searching my computer for a specific photo because I thought a story about that photo would make a good blog post. I couldn’t find the photo that I was looking for, but I did find this one, and it’s amazing.

Yesiree bob, what we have here is a vintage Olan Mills studio shot of the Glassman Boys. My older brothers Scott and Jonathan, and me in the most ridiculous shirt the 1970s could possibly throw up around my neck. There’s another one with the three of us and our parents, but not my sister- I assume this is when Michelle was off at college.

Here’s the thing about this photo that is the most interesting to me: I don’t remember it. I don’t even remember going to this photo session a little tiny bit. I didn’t even know I had this file on my computer until just a few minutes before I started writing this post.

I know that I was about ten years old here, because I was wearing the same horrible Art Deco shirt in my 1982 elementary school class photo. (Seriously, it looks like Andy Warhol and Piet Mondrian got drunk together and threw up on a canvas!)

Guess who didn't fully understand the "cowboys and indians" theme they wanted for class photos that year? — Guess who didn’t fully understand the “dress up as cowboys and indians” theme they wanted for class photos that year? Yup, that would be me!

I do remember another studio photograph that was taken with my siblings, including my sister- that one is indelibly burned into my brain for two reasons- the first is that I actually had a copy of that one all these years, whereas the sibling picture up above is actually new to me. The second reason the other one is far more memorable is that my sister drove us to and from the studio, and on the way home a neighborhood girl chased a ball into the street in front of our car. The girl survived, but I remember her having a nearly full body cast for a while after. Michelle was traumatized, naturally, because running over a person is scary and stressful. (Or so I imagine.)

My memory of the times before high school is fragmented at best. I’m not really sure why that is. Some people have really detailed memories of their childhood, but the only things I remember clearly tend to have to do with times that I was either very embarrassed, very angry, or with very dear friends. Memory is weird that way.

Speaking of memory, I have no idea what my original idea was for the primary thread of this post, so I’ll wrap up with another childhood memory. This one is more funny than traumatic.

In the late 1970s, my brothers had a giant Habitrail with a bunch of gerbils in it. For the uninitiated, Habitrail is this system of tubes and spires that allows you to take any standard sized fish tank and make it a playground kingdom for gerbils. It’s changed over the years, but do a Google Image search and you can get a basic idea of what a Habitrail looks like.

I don’t remember what all of the Gerbil’s names were, but I know that one of them was named Chip. I know this, because at a few minutes before 8pm one night, one brother says to the other, “Let’s go watch CHiPs.” The Larry Wilcox/Erik Estrada show premiered when I was about five years old, and I didn’t watch nearly as much television back then. For one thing, there were only about a dozen channels between the VHF and UHF dials, and we didn’t have cable television yet because it was still the 1970s.

“Let’s go watch CHiPs,” said my brother, and I pointed to the Habitrail and responded in the only way that made any sense to my tiny brain at the time:

“But why are you going in there? Chip’s right here!”

What’s the earliest thing you remember?

Editor’s Note: I’m attempting to blog every day in November with CheerPeppers. I don’t expect to succeed because life be crazy, but any blogging in excess of my previous post-free month is a win, right?

All For Love

On September 12, 2016September 12, 2016 By StevenIn Life At Home16 Comments

I was clicking around today, when I learned that Bell Biv Devoe has released “Run,” their first new song in fifteen years. I watched the video, and then I fell down the Wiki-hole. It started with an idle curiosity about just how old Ricky Bell, Michael Bivens, and Ronnie DeVoe are. I also thought that Bobby Brown was dead, for some reason, but I was mistaken about that.

For me, those names, along with Ralph Tresvant, are still forever-linked with New Edition, the band they all shared throughout most of the 1980s. I used to have their first singles (Cool It Now, Mr. Telephone Man) on 45 rpm vinyl, the cassette singles of my youth. In late 1985, thirteen year old me played the hell out of my All For Love cassette. I still occasionally hum their song about staying in school.

There’s a verse in one of the songs, where the band members are listed off: “Ronnie, Bobbie, Ricky and Mike,” says Ralph Tresvant, and “Hey Ralph!” says one of the others. I’m not actually sure who has the line, but that little back-and-forth has been stuck in my head on and off for thirty years.

Fast forward to April of 1986. I was in the eighth grade, and my father had secured tickets to the two of us to see the “All For Love” tour in the West Palm Beach auditorium! This was my first ever concert, although I’ve seen at least 128 other musical acts since then. I didn’t know it at the time, but Bobby Brown had just left the group, so he wasn’t part of the 1986 tour.

Dad was a very good sport to take me, because this entire event was way outside of his comfort zone. The general admission system wasn’t very well organized for this show, and getting into a seat involved a fair amount of pushing through a crush of people. I was a small kid at that point in my life, so it was extra crazy for me.

I still have the ticket stub for this show. I still have almost all of my ticket stubs. This one is kind of amazing because it was printed by a ticketing company that no longer exists (Bass Ticket Outlets), for a concert venue that no longer exists (the West Palm Beach Auditorium).