Hi Readers, before continuing on the latest list foolishness, an announcement:
Whoever ran it is suspending the "follow by e-mail" feature. It will stop completely in June or July, so if anyone is using that, please switch over to the Facebook or Twitter links over to the right of the post on the main site.
Or just read it manually I guess. Thanx everyone!
This is - as required by most of my loopy systems- more of an explanation than an introduction.
What made it easy to identify these albums are two items that came from college I require music for.
A) Exercise.
B) Driving.
I didn't exercise before college, because I was a waste of space.
I did drive, but hardly ever a long enough distance that put me outside the range of local radio stations.
Come to think of it, listening to the car radio is probably one of the ways I finally branched out to "real" music as opposed to listening to only Stand Up Comedy and Novelty Records up until age seventeen or so.
Once I needed to regularly take the three hour (pre Route 287 opening) drive to or from RPI, I required a way to have my own music with me. Originally, this took the form of a TDK pouch that officially held ten cassettes. (Plus two laid on top of the others) Since my original car only had a radio, I'd seatbelt a boom box next to me for long trips.
This led to gaining a fantastic amount of manual dexterity while driving, allowing selection of items on play lists with ease using current ergonomic controls. It also led to leaning towards longer albums or combinations to limit the need for those fantastic manual dexterity moments.
There were lapses in dexterity. One was non music related when I was returning to college back in the mists of the ancient past when the first toll when entering the New York Thruway was thirty-five cents. I was transferring the quarter and dime from the cup holder on my right to my left hand without releasing the wheel by briefly holding them between my lips...
Except I hit a pothole and the jarring motion caused me to swallow the dime. Not only did I almost choke to death, but I was suddenly without the exact change for the lane I occupied.
But back to the boom box, which made long lasting batteries key. One weekend Sophomore year I drove to visit Lee at his Pennsylvania school...a seven hour trip.
Shortly after the return journey started, the batteries died, leaving me constantly searching for the nearest rock station as I passed through every town between the middle of PA and upstate NY. I must have heard the current Bon Jovi hit a hundred times.
It came on once more as I reached the final leg of the journey and Albany's PYX 106 was in range. By that point, (with windows wide open to keep me awake), a moment occurred that I probably need to apologize to all residents of Cobleskill, New York for.
This is due to them hearing me screaming at the top of my lungs, "SHOT DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOWNNNNN!! IN A BLAZE OF GLOOOOOOOOORYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!" as I passed through their town.
The point before those goofy asides being- I needed long tapes. One of the earliest mix tapes I made for driving was more or less a "best of" the music on early Laughter Hours shows titled, "Catchy Stuff" filled with tunes that kept me bopping along down the road.
On the flip side, (to make another old music media reference) I found myself running. Therefore, I needed to identify albums that would inspire me to keep pounding along around the track. A custom mix was the first there as well, "Mighty Stuff." It contained Wagner, superhero, sword and sorcery, and majestic sci fi soundtracks - and other such items.
I learned pretty quickly that both "Mighty" and "Catchy" albums worked for both driving and running.
Over the years as my cars' technology passed through an in dash tape deck, to a CD adaptor cord, to a real CD player, and now digital playlist access, I copied those mix tapes onto CD and then MP3 files. The playlist they inspired became "Mighty Catchy Stuff" and grew larger and larger over time. To keep from filling up all the device's memory, there is now an "Essential Mighty Catchy Stuff."
The topic at hand is albums that were influential to me. (Hey, I had to get back here eventually.) What I noticed to create this list is albums that are ALWAYS on the "Essential Mighty Catchy Stuff" list, many of which date all the way back to that old TDK tape case.
Before getting to the list proper, there naturally are some "don't counts."
Stand up gets stuck in my head like songs do for most people, the first record I bought with my own money was Steve Martin's Let's Get Small, but there's no way I'm going down that rabbit hole or these posts will never end. However it deserves a note as I still find it the best way to stay focused and alert on long, late night drives.
Playlists or mix tapes I crafted myself don't count. That includes the original Mighty and Catchy Stuff tapes that are digitally recreated on the essential playlist. Additionally it includes stuff like the fantastic to run to Lion King soundtrack that I removed the slow songs from and added other tunes alluded to in the movie but not on the official CD, like "The Lion Sleeps Tonight."
A depressing disqualification is the terminally catchy combination tape of selections from Sesame Street, and The Electric Company, plus 1970's TV Theme tunes and Disco hits. That always put a spring in my loping step.
This also means the random selection of songs from They Might Be Giants, Talking Heads, Frank Zappa, Madness and Devo I picked up dorming with Jesse for four years gets left off, as none of them are an entire album.
Speaking of the Eighties, Pac Man Fever juuuuuuuuuuuuust misses the list since, going back to when it was a tape of the vinyl album, I have always skipped the Centipede song for being far too long. This is why there's no Disney Park compilation album on here either. Every one of them has that interminable, boring "Impressions De France" bit.
Sadly, my entire collection of Muppet cassettes were next up when my tape to MP3 machine broke and I never got around to uploading them. The single compilation CD sort of qualifies, but is only a tiny cross section of the Muppet tunes that should be in the car with me, and again, there are slow songs that always get skipped.
It was required to own AC/DC's Back in Black and Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon, in order to live in my freshman dorm, and I always keep copies available to allow entry into any gathering of males my age.
And as any Pratchet/ Gaiman fan knows, any tape left in a car long enough becomes Queen's Greatest Hits, so I can't take responsibility for that.
Come back next week for the start of the list!
No comments:
Post a Comment