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I first heard this on Live After Death at the tender age of ten. The studio version came along two years afterward when my Nanna gave me Piece Of Mind on tape for my birthday. I didn't particularly like or dislike the song, it was just there. Years later I was surprised to learn how revered it had become among fans, and one review from a man whose opinion I had a lot of respect for called it 'glorious.' When I bought Flight 666 and track 4 of the first CD thundered out of my speakers, it all fell into place.
Led Zeppelin III
My Dad bought me a Walkman, or something very like one, for my tenth birthday. With it came my premature introduction to Zep because 'that's what all the kids are listening to, right?' Father Of Mine has never been what you'd call an authority on popular music and to this day he still lectures me about my lack of appreciation for Wagner. Anyway:
Immigrant Song appealed to the nascent headbanger I was at the time, but Since I've Been Loving You seemed to drag on forever. As for all that folky, country, acoustic stuff on Side Two, fuggedaboutit! It would take me another seven years to develop a proper appreciation for Zep and when I did, this album was at the heart of it. Essential listening for moody teenage Scribbles and still a desert island disc for me today.
The Beatles
For years, almost as long I can recall, I dismissed The Fab Four as relics of my parents' era and never paid much attention to them. Then, just as Nirvana, Pearl Jam et al ruined music in the early 90s, the red and blue compilation albums came out on CD and kicked off my sex and drug free hippie period. This coincided with my finishing high school and starting university, so I was in the right headspace for my mind to be blown if nothing else . A Beatles moment I will take to my grave happened at my friend Brad's place at the end of 1994. He put on his Dad's vinyl of Abbey Road, which I hadn't yet listened to all the way through, and I got far enough into it to forget where I was.
The Rolling Stones.
I remember hearing Emotional Rescue on the radio as a new release. I loathed it then and still can't stomach it today, to the point where I avoided listening to any Stones (let alone seeking them out) for at least the next fifteen years. I don't recall exactly when my resistance began to crumble, but the point is I finally caught on that they have hundreds of other songs. Most of which, in particular those from the 60s and 70s, are pretty damned good. A track like Gimme Shelter covers a multitude of sins.
Queen - I am old enough to remember when they first hit the big time, first song I heard was Killer Queen, thought it sounded like the Partridge Family on acid.
The Flaming Lips/Nada Surf - My first impression was that they were novelty acts but later songs were nothing less than amazing.
I grew to hate this music as a teen growing up in the 70s. Then thru the 1980s it kind of faded away from mass media as the focus was on the Baby Boomers and the 1960s, and I was listening mostly to rock and alternative. In the early to mid 90s, the 70s began to creep back into radio airplay and movies and other media, and I went back and relistened to a lot of 1970s pop and disco, and found that I actually liked a lot of it.
Most popular music is written with dual themes. There is the obvious meaning that is sometimes trotted out to the public....then there is the more important and real meaning that is encoded in the lyrics and music videos.
For instance, it took me 30 years to figure out the second meaning to one of my favorite pop songs, Love is a Stranger by Eurythmics. The lyrics on the surface are obvious enough. But the video always intrigued me. I finally figured it out that the song is really about how it's really about how the lead singer, Annie Lennox, was sold out by her boyfriend Dave Stewart, to trauma based mind control.
Unless you know something about the CIA's mind control programs, you have no clue that's what the video is about. But once you learn the right background information, and once you know how to spot certain kinds of symbolism that is repeated over and over again throughout pop music lyrics and videos, it becomes much easier to spot.
Once you decode one song / video, you can decode others. I realized Shock the Monkey by Peter Gabriel was about Peter being put under trauma based mind control. Of course, that was not the official meaning of the song that Gabriel trotted out to the general public.
Here's a good explanation of Laura Branigan's hit Self Control:
Joy Division: I confess that it took me nearly 30 years to finally "get" why they became one of the most influential groups in history. I remember sitting in a darkened room, brooding about something, feeling both depressed and aggressive, and then I heard dark, angular, roiling guitar intertwined with a disjointed, fragmented but melodic bassline... Then some tortured soul starts wailing about the dead souls of conquistadors calling to him, the guitar and bass don't let up, the whole thing gets ferocious...and wow... "Dead Souls" won me over. Joy Division deserves their legend.
The Smiths: "How Soon Is Now?" got its point across from Day One, but when I bought the album (to which the single had been added for the US market), I was gobsmacked at how unlike the single the rest of the album sounded. Morrissey is definitely an acquired taste to be sure. This was another nearly-30-year project. I had randomplay on, and "That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore" came on. I was first drawn in by the band, and cautious about Morrissey. However, when he switched into a lilting manic-depressive chorus, I got curious about the lyrics and started replaying the song. I finally could get where he was coming from. I went back and played the whole album, and wouldn't you know it? It turned out to be one of the greatest albums I had ever consciously avoided. Legend earned here, too.
Can: I always knew of these krautrock titans, but never quite found an accessible way in. Decades passed, until I was reading about how "Yoo Doo Right" was cut down to 20 minutes from a 6-hour version of the song. I went and listened to it, and became mesmerized; I can think of very few 20-minute songs that entranced me like this one did. This got me to seek out Tago Mago and the rest followed. In my private musical universe, Can is a Hall of Fame inductee and important cornerstone to a lot of my favorite music from the 00's-10's.
The Gun Club: In the 80's, I gave them one spin and thought they sounded too murky and monotonous. That was it; I never gave them a second thought for 20 years or so. Then, I went through a period of listening to 80's bands from Los Angeles, and they came up again. Years of 90's lo-fi (or digital remastering?) must have acclimated my ears, because they jumped right out at me. Dark, aggressive, rocking, and sometimes funny; the late Jeffrey Lee Pierce was one of the great lost tortured frontmen of indie rock.
Van Morrison: Look, I respect him, I acknowledge his importance, I know about his loyal fans... Sorry, after over 35 years of trying, I still can't see what all the fuss was about. I like his small number of hits, but every time I tried to sit through one of his classic albums, I fell asleep. I know I have to be missing something (am I?), but whatever it is, it eludes me.
The Fugs: I don't know why I waited so long. Maybe their name put me off. Maybe their appearance did. Maybe their song titles did. I sampled some of their songs over the years, but none struck me as indispensable. The song that won me over was "Coming Down", an absurd but finely wrought, funny, and well-sung ode to crashing after a cocaine high. This drew me into their first two albums, which are masterpieces of proto-psychedelia and East Village folk.
Alice Coltrane: Jazz itself takes time with me, although I do have my instant favorites. Alice Coltrane took some extra time, twenty years or so. Her challenging brand of avant/free jazz and her weird first instrument (harp) and the fact that she was married to a jazz giant kept me at arm's length; her records sounded cluttered and complicated. I finally gave A Monastic Trio one last shot, and wound up spellbound enough to keep playing her catalog in order through the early 70's. Getting into Ornette Coleman (which wasn't instant either) may have prepped me for her.
Warren Zevon: When he was alive, I never gave him much of a chance; he seemed too much like a wiseguy to me. I thought he was a little too much like Randy Newman without the distance Newman put between himself and his characters, which wasn't a good thing. I also thought he wasn't very hummable. Then, I saw a clip of freakin' GG Allin, of all possible people, leading a singalong of "Carmelita", which made me thirsty for Linda Ronstadt's version, which ultimately led me back to Zevon's 70's albums, which went down just fine with drinks on the patio in the sunshine. He really was gifted after all; too bad he spent so much time being a fuggup. At least he went out a champ.
Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band: I've been a fan for decades now, but it didn't come naturally. Very much like with Frank Zappa, I found his music confounding. As it turned out, I needed to "get" Zappa first before I could relate to Beefheart (although this is not true for most fans) "Willie the Pimp" (which he recorded with Zappa) was what finally blew me away and got me acclimated. Rather than opting for the famously weird opus Trout Mask Replica, I went for the more accessible Clear Spot, and "Low Yo Yo Stuff" convinced me. I revisited his debut Safe As Milk, and finally saw it for the deranged (yet at times beautiful) masterpiece it is, and then the rest fell into place.
In the early 90s, I was starting to get away from R&B music because I didn't like the turn that it was taking and started to listen to Jazz and Light Jazz, and originally I didn't like Light Jazz artist Boney James' 1995 "Seduction" album because it sounded a little too R&B for me at the time.
Here is a song off that album to show you what I meant.
Also, being an old time R&B fan, originally, I really didn't like the R&B group called Cameo. However, in the 70s and the 80s, my younger brother loved them, but I thought that their music had this kind of 'goofy' or 'silly' element in it that seemed to turn me off.
However, I did purchase their 1979 album called "Secret Omen" which seemed to have more of a structured and disco sound, and loved the first single from that album along with the rest of the album.
But for the albums over the next couple of years, some singles I liked while some of them I thought sounded bizarre such as the title song to their 1982 album "Alligator Woman."
However, in 1986 they kind of had a re-emergence with a huge crossover hit called Word Up off their 1986 album with the same name, which I really liked along with some other songs off that album.
But it wasn't really until about 3 or 4 years agos that I heard a song by them on the radio that I really liked and decided to purchase their 2 disc Anthology album where now I like every song on that album.
I can't believe that didn't like it, I thought it was a bunch of noise.
Well a good chunk of it is noise...fantastic feedback and assorted mayhem by Townshend,
manic drumming from Moon, Entwistle holding it all together with a very
powerful (and distorted) bass.
On a related note (no pun intended) the best rock video on youtube for me is
The Who extended version of "Sparks", live at Woodstock 1969.
5 minutes of Who power ...Pete even gets po'd tangled up in his guitar cable
not missing a beat....his guitar feedbacking as only SG Special thru cranked Hiwatts can sound.
It may as well have taken me forever to finally get my following favorites.
Billy Joe Royal (Actually it did take me forever because its too late now for me to have the ability to say to his face that I love him.)
James Otto
Alison Krauss
God bless you and James and Alison always!!!
Holly
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. A Beatles moment I will take to my grave happened at my friend Brad's place at the end of 1994. He put on his Dad's vinyl of Abbey Road, which I hadn't yet listened to all the way through, and I got far enough into it to forget where I was.
