For the Record Top 10: #5 (halfway there, folks!)

The Replacements Boink!! EP (1986)

Just as kids can’t believe their parents may once have been cool teenagers, I can barely fathom a time when I did not know and love The Replacements; however, before pulling this obscure cassette from the stacks at Tu Trax record shop, the fabled quartet was wholly unknown to me. Pre-Internet there were a precious few ways for smalltown-me to discover new bands: 1) friend recommendations and 2) cover art. Boink!! was a gamble. The band name had potential--who but a truly clever punk band would name themselves after something that substitutes for something else? The cover seemed promising--a sepia image of scrappy-looking nobodys loitering in a dank alley. Then there was the record label: Glass, Linburn House, London. That’s right, I thought The Replacements were a British band.  Popping the cassette into the deck of my car, I was hooked immediately. This band was exactly what I had hoped for: raw, melodic, restless, dirty. The bullhorn intro to “Kids Don’t Follow” made me love them even more: “Helloooo, this is the Minneapolis police, the party is over!” These guys weren’t Brits, they were Midwestern cousins from the Twin Cities.

For the Record Top 10: #4

The Jimi Hendrix Experience Axis: Bold As Love (1967)

I was born on the day Jimi Hendrix died: September 18, 1970. Perhaps this explains my deep connection to Hendrix’s music. (Too bad I couldn’t have gleaned more guitar skills as our life forces slipped past other that day.) He was an odd interjection in my musical world. My older brother wasn’t into Jimi, nor, in fact, any of the other bands I would eventually embrace as my own. My dad is a bluegrass nut, and Mom loved Barry Manilow, mostly while she ironed.  Certainly the posters, T-shirts and other paraphernalia I ogled at Trucker’s Union on Water Street in Eau Claire (a nearby college town) were an influence. Axis’s cover was intriguing when I pulled it from the shelf at Tu Trax (also on Water Street), but what really tripped me out was the music: swirling, screeching wah guitars, irresistible grooves, and Jimi’s laissez faire vocals. Hendrix became the soundtrack for summer; in fact, anytime I play Jimi, especially Axis: Bold As Love, I am zapped back to the municipal tennis courts playing against my buddy Andy with “Spanish Castle Magic” blaring from the speakers of my car.

For The Record Top 10: #3

Sorry for all (two) of you who had to wait for me to continue my top 10 albums list, "real life" needs to take priority over my dreams of rock writing. But, the list continues, and will continue, though intermittently. Stay tuned...

Ramones Subterranean Jungle (1983)

This is the record that yanked me out of popular music almost altogether. Prior to my friend Tim Jacobson playing his copy for me, I was addicted to Radio (yes, at that time it was capitalized). While playing driveway or indoor Nerf basketball, I  kept a blank tape in my puny, fire engine red Panasonic boom box and stopped--sometimes mid-shot--to hit “RECORD” when Casey Kasem or the local WAQE DJ played a song I liked. Eddy Grant, The Police, and Men At Work were frequent game-interrupters. When he first played this cassette for me, Tim likely had to eject a TDK tape hand-labeled “KOOL TUNES” to make way for New York’s finest. I made sure my bedroom door was closed for that initial listen: these guys looked badass, forbidden, underground. What would my parents think? As soon as the first naked bass riff melded into the head-bobbing, hand-clapping beat (and soon after that cowbell interlude, DAMN!), I was hooked. Joey’s nasal delivery, Dee Dee’s chainsaw guitar, “Outsider” (my theme song), “Psycho Therapy,” “Time Bomb.” I grabbed my RATT Out of the Cellar tape and threw it (literally) into the back of my closet. I’ve been riding the underground ever since.

For The Record: Top Ten #2 Multiplication Rock

Multiplication Rock (1973)

In my musical world, before there was Michael Stipe, Robert Smith, Bono or Lou Reed, there was Bob Dorough. While many Gen Xers gravitate to “Conjunction Junction” or “I’m Just A Bill,” four decades later, I still count by threes and fives fluently by singing songs from this album. The genius of this record is its stylistic variety. Bob Dorough, a noted jazz composer and pianist, didn’t just generate cheesy campfire songs or bland middle-of-the-road rock-turned-teacher. He infused his masterful mathematical lessons with a bit of California rock (“Three Is A Magic Number”), shades of psychedelia (“Little Twelve Toes”), solid soul (“I Got Six”), and, appropriately for that troublesome times table, some smokey blues (“Naughty Number Nine,” sung by the fantastic Grady Tate). When I put on this record (which I still do; in fact, that’s my original copy from childhood in the photo), I’m taken back to the mid-’70s, not sitting in front of the Saturday morning TV but huddled with my brother and our Panasonic cassette player (the kind you’d find in an old school A/V room) in the backseat of our family car counting Noah’s animals off two by two.

For The Record (rebirth): Top 10 Albums challenge

My friend Deb recently tagged me for the "Top 10 Albums" challenge on Facebook.  I normally disregard such "chain letter" bait, but this challenge hits at the heart of who I am as a music fan and writer. I've been wanting to resuscitate my long-neglected blog, and this was the perfect primer to re-launch my "For The Record" online column.

I obsess over music they way most guys obsess over sports; therefore, when this challenge came my way, I pushed it off until the weekend so I could devote myself to generating a proper list with quality write-ups. I began brainstorming my Top 10 List, which quickly grew to more than 20 albums that I felt were foundational in my life. With much difficulty, I was able to narrow the list to a true "Top 10" (OK, I went "Spinal Tap" and took my list to 11) and immediately planned to add a bonus "Next 10" list later.

To enhance the "challenge" aspect, I decided to set some parameters for formatting: cover pic (from my actual collection), release year, and write-up, 200 words MAX.

Here's the first installment. Stay tuned!

-Greg

U2 Acthung Baby (1991)

As a 21-year-old exchange student in Japan, I first spotted the “new U2” on music TV in their frankly confusing “Fly” video. Where’s the stunning, black-and-white starkness of The Joshua Tree? What the fuck is up with the sunglasses and cigarillos? Are those rhinestones on Edge’s pants? Then the boys from Dublin really pissed me off. On November 11, 1991, I asked for the album at the underground CD shop (literally in a subway station). The clerk instead handed me a flyer touting “Super Rock Band U2.” The release date had been overwritten in Sharpie to November 18. I had saved my yen and searched them out, and U2 stood me up. To spite them, I bought an album by Japanese band Fence of Defense, digitaglam-FOD VI, whose sci-fi-infused single “9.9.9” I’d also seen on music TV. That album is phenomenal--one of the greatest headphone records I’ve ever experienced--but it’s a novelty compared to the depth, discombobulation and painful rebirth pangs of Achtung Baby. The songs sound like Japan felt. I have an undying love for Achtung Baby, perhaps because it initially played so “hard to get” on so many levels.