The one album that blew your head right off from your shoulders

For me, it was The Minutemen. I found a double ( Hey! that's two albums!) 45 pure white (like the Beatles album) , in a Salvation Army store, for four bucks- 1990.
Just now, I'm playing John Zorn - The Goddess (2010).
Stay cool y'all.



Edited 6 time(s). Last edit at 02/15/2025 05:10PM by STEVE.

In 1980 I had heard three songs off of "Peter Gabriel" a.k.a. "Melt," on the radio where DJs were sampling new releases that week on air. I bought it immediately and it was filled with exotic instrumentation I'd never heard before in the service of burningly intense music. It was the red line that once drawn on the earth said "the 70s were over!"

Some time in 1983. I was rifling through the used bins at Crunchy Armadillo and saw, boy howdy, copies of "Real To Real Cacophony" [Ger. Virgin] and "Empires + Dance" [UK Zoom]. I had "New Gold Dream [81, 82, 83. 84]" and the US 12" of "Promised You A Miracle" and the UK 2x7" that kicked everything off in 1982: "Sweat In Bullet." I played "Empires + Dance" first. I dropped the needle on "I Travel" and had to keep doing it impatiently for a few times; so impactful was the experience. Then I finally played it through. A complete, tangible world was in those grooves. And then it simply grew in stature over time.

Former TP subscriber [81, 82, 83, 84]

[postpunkmonk.com]
For further rumination on the Fresh New Sound of Yesterday®

STEVE said one, Monk went for two, so here's three.

1. I've probably shared this story here before, but whatever. By the winter of 1980 - my senior year in high school - I was familiar with the name the Velvet Underground, as they turned up listed as influences on most of the stuff I was listening to, but I'd never heard them since all their stuff was either out of print or not something you were going to find stocked in mall record stores. Then one Saturday night I had nothing much going on and found myself at the local Venture department store, where they'd gotten in a shipment of cut out 8-track tapes they were peddling for a buck apiece. There was a copy of Archetypes by the VU in the cut outs, so I grabbed that. I had no idea at the time that Archetypes was actually White Light/White Heat repackaged as a pseudo-compilation, and still have no idea why a label would've even bothered with such a thing. Anyhow, I popped it in my car's 8-track player, and it was sequenced with "Sister Ray" as the lead-off track, and I spent the next 40 or so minutes driving around on empty country roads past barren winter trees under a full moon being assaulted, thrilled and terrified by the likes of "Sister Ray," "The Gift," "Lady Godiva's Operation" and "I Heard Her Call My Name." By that point, I had six or so years of listening to bands influenced by the Velvets under my belt, but my 17-year-old self was still nowhere near prepared for White Light/White Heat.

2. I had The Kick Inside and Lionheart, but had skipped Never Forever because, while I liked Kate Bush okay, she wasn't really a priority for me. Then I was in Springfield, IL for an Air National Guard weekend and went to Appletree Records on Saturday night with money burning a hole in my pocket, but nothing really caught my eye except the cover of Kate's new album, The Dreaming - which is an eye-catching cover indeed - so I grabbed it, thinking I knew what to expect. I wasn't able to listen to it until I got home Sunday night, but when I did get it on the turntable I was startled by the thunderous percussion that kicked off "Sat In Your Lap," and was pretty much continously startled for the rest of the album as Kate whispered, cooed, howled and shrieked through a variety of songs until she eventually departed the album braying like a donkey as an entire haunted house went insane around her. Kate Bush was never not a priority for me again after that.

3. Another Air National Guard related story - I'd been in Gulfport, MS for a week as part of my unit's war games, but since I worked in the personnel office, most of my week had been spent sitting at a desk reading The World According to Garp. I flew back into Springfield on Saturday so stopped at Appletree on my way home to see if anything new had come out that week, and there was Dazzle Ships. I was already a huge OMD fan and already had the 45 of "Genetic Engineering," so I knew this new album wasn't going to sound quite like the previous OMD albums. But I was still taken aback when it began with a radio signal from Czechoslovakia, then sequed into Speak & Spell toys jabbering about genetics and robots learning their abc's and a young girl from Nicaragua with her hands cut off at the wrists and a battle at sea and clocks from around the world synching up. It felt like nothing less than a pop band struggling to understand what the actual fuck was going on in the world and ending up with a mess of shapes and sounds that told the story while simultaneously concealing it in fragments - pretty much like a warship painted with dazzle camouflage.

Yep, Velvet underground for me, too. By ‘83, I’d read enough about them, and heard some VU covers, and maybe a couple of their actual songs to be increasingly fascinating by them. I was determined to hear ‘em. It wasn’t easy! I would go into record stores but they wouldn’t have nuthin. Finally, like breno, found a cheap reissue, in this case the Nico album on vinyl but without the gatefold cover. Very minimal packaging.

Still, listening on headphones in mom’s living room, the realization struck me: this is a great album. And I hadn’t even finished side 1 yet. Oh! to experience music like that again. But you can only hear “Venus in Furs” for the first time once.

Other life/music changing albums I’d heard for a while on the radio before I got ‘em (speaking of The Minutemen and “The Dreaming”) or were growers that I didn’t quite grasp right away , like “Metal Box” and Capt Beefheart. But the incredible variety of styles, the unearthly sounds, the gut-punching songwriting of “VU+Nico” instantly propelled the VU to favorite band status. All of a sudden, Devo and The Clash were demoted. Still loved ‘em, but sorry guys!

The albums that leap to my mind for their galvanizing, life-changing effect on me, from the first time I listened to them, are Unknown Pleasures, Remain in Light and Zen Arcade.

But the true life-redirecting moment came via Saturday Night Live. I'm sure I must've told this story on this site before, but ... here it is again.

My brother and I were fans of SNL, like most teenagers I knew. And thanks to the gasoline shortages of 1979-1979, a lot of teenagers were as likely to stay home on Saturday nights as they were to get in the car (if they had one) and go somewhere. We already had discovered Talking Heads and Devo on SNL, and we both were impressed and intrigued.

The night that The B-52's were the musical guest, my brother and I were at our house watching, along with his girlfriend. When the band started playing, it was love at first strum. I was watching them and listening to them, gape-jawed, while behind me, his girlfriend was whining, "Who is this shitty band? Who told them they could play? Why is Saturday Night Live booking all these shitty bands these days, blah blah blah ..."

At the same moment, as if we'd planned and practiced for this, we both turned to her and yelled, "WILL YOU SHUT UP!!!"

The next day, he and I pooled our available cash and went to the record store. We bought The B-52's and Q: Are We Not Men? We didn't have enough for a third album, and they didn't have Talking Heads in stock anyway.

The following week, the kid across the street came over to see me. He hadn't sent in the catalog card for the RCA Record Club (remember the way that business worked?), and as a result, they'd sent him the selection of the week. He handed me his brand-new, barely-played copy of More Songs About Buildings and Food and said, "I hate this fucking album, it sucks. If you want it, you can have it."

When my brother got home from work, I held up that Polaroid-mosaic album cover and told him, "Jackpot."

They’ve been showing footage of SNL musical guests for their 50th anniversary.

Captain Beefheart finishes, and there is NO applause.

I’ve heard rock lobster a million times, but am always taken back by how BRUTAL the guitar is in that song.

And when Belushi brought on Fear…

I know I have mentioned this in a previous thread at some point over the years but being a white kid growing up in the mid-80s in a Central California town know for oil, agriculture and Buck Owens, there wasn't much exposure to music beyond country and classic rock.

In 1985, at age 16, a friend of mine, who was slightly more cool than I was (which is to say not at all), bought a cassette of the Cure's "Head on the Door" album and it blew my mind. It opened a whole door to a musical world I didn't know existed as it sounded nothing like what I heard before and I wanted to know where this music came from.

I started buying UK Music magazines (and the Trouser press record guide) that my local bookstore stocked and spending way too much of my disposable income on music. I started with The Smiths, Siouxsie, Echo and the Bunnymen and then later The Clash, The Jam, The Specials, English Beat, etc. as I worked my way back, also discovering the CBGB bands like Talking Heads and Television and early college rock like REM and the Replacements.

It started with The Cure though. "The Head on the Door" was ground zero for me.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/17/2025 08:32AM by jothoma.

jothoma Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I know I have mentioned this in a previous thread
> at some point over the years but being a white kid
> growing up in the mid-80s in a Central California
> town know for oil, agriculture and Buck Owens,
> there wasn't much exposure to music beyond country
> and classic rock.
>
> In 1985, at age 16, a friend of mine, who was
> slightly more cool than I was (which is to say not
> at all), bought a cassette of the Cure's "Head on
> the Door" album and it blew my mind. It opened a
> whole door to a musical world I didn't know
> existed as it sounded nothing like what I heard
> before and I wanted to know where this music came
> from.
>
> I started buying UK Music magazines (and the
> Trouser press record guide) that my local
> bookstore stocked and spending way too much of my
> disposable income on music. I started with The
> Smiths, Siouxsie, Echo and the Bunnymen and then
> later The Clash, The Jam, The Specials, English
> Beat, etc. as I worked my way back, also
> discovering the CBGB bands like Talking Heads and
> Television and early college rock like REM and the
> Replacements.
>
> It started with The Cure though. "The Head on the
> Door" was ground zero for me.

And for me The Cure never got any better. But the three albums afterward sure got l-o-n-g-e-r. I didn't bother with what came after that.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 02/18/2025 03:16PM by Post-Punk Monk.

Days in Europa The Skids still my favourite album. Brings back so many memories whenever I listen to it. Which I do frequently.

I was already a bit of a fan of The Stranglers for a few years, specifically two albums: La Folie and The Raven. For some reason, mainly because of the lukewarm review on All Music, I never gave Black and White a chance. When I finally did about 5 years ago...wow. It is soooooo good.

I wasn't sure I could answer this because in most cases, things had to grow on me. If something immediately knocked me over, it probably played to existing tastes, and if something really showed me something new, I probably didn't react in the manner of the topic heading.

But now I remember one such moment: John Coltrane's Ascenscion. I was already familiar with free jazz, but not that much, and when I first put it on, I immediately wondered if it was something that would appeal to me at all. But I went in knowing it was meant to be a challenge, so I sat there with the volume cranked up (if you're going to do this, do it right; no half-measures) and let the sound bathe me. By the end, it really was a case of me sitting there thinking, "holy fuck, that was mind blowing."