"I like beautiful melodies telling me terrible things."
- Tom Waits
Remember back in the day when you purchased albums? Or for that matter, eight-track tapes, or cassette tapes, or CDs? You were in possession of a group of songs by a band or an artist that was, in a way, like a book. Each song was like a chapter that was part of the telling of a story. If you skipped chapters you didn't understand the book.
Chances are back then you didn't have a ton of money, so the few albums you bought you listened to and got to know really well. You listened to them over and over ("I wore that album out"). You pored over the liner notes. You got to know the order of the songs. I'll bet for some of you, the order on some of your favorite albums is still lodged in your brain. I haven't listened to The Eagles On the Border album in years, but if I hear Already Gone, I know You never Cry Like a Lover comes next.
That whole thing is gone now. Streaming music has made it obsolete. Now you just pluck out single songs and go on your way. Maybe you sample some songs on a virtual “album," but if they don't grab you in the first ten seconds, you move on. The time necessary to develop any affection for new tunes never happens. They have no chance to grow on you.
I'm as bad as anyone. I flit about, too. I'm just saying I miss those rich days when you had a relationship with all the music on an album. Maybe you didn't love every song but at least they were given a fair hearing.
Where's this going, anyway? I was thinking about different albums from life that hold almost sacred value to me. I'll bet you have several too. It kinda makes me sad that, for the most part, few people will experience that now - the album as an entity.
I like to play the old desert island game. Like, if you were stuck all alone on an island, and you had only one food to eat, what would you want it to be? That sort of thing.
So it got me wondering, what ten albums would I want to be stranded with until someone found me? Here's what I came up with. It's hard. There are 50 more that could have been swapped in. Ask me next week and it might be a different list. Send me yours if you're inclined.
- The Allman Brothers at Fillmore East
- The Cars - Candy-O
- Lynyrd Skynyrd - Street Survivors
- Loudon Wainwright III - The Last Man on Earth
- Patty Griffin - Living With Ghosts
- Wilco - A.M.
- The Guess Who - Greatest Hits (Sorry, that's cheating)
- Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers - Damn the Torpedoes
- R.E.M. - Life's Rich Pageant
- Dire Straits - Dire Straits