Author: Ellen

Instead of boring my friends with my need to catalog my life through music, I'm putting it here.

Don’t Worry About the Government

Talking Heads – Don’t Worry About the Government

I am pretty sure that Psycho Killer was something we’d heard on WLIR but I don’t think we had much more of an awareness of the Talking Heads than that. Eventually though, this album made its way into our house.

I can remember sitting on the floor with one of my older sisters and some of her friends, listening to this song, while we dreamed up what the perfect building to live in would be. A building with every convenience.

I could be wrong about the timing but I kind of think this would have been around the time that my two oldest sisters had summer jobs in the city working at MoMA as guards for the big Picasso exhibit. I feel like the weeks they worked there and the people they met broadened what they, and by extension the rest of us, were listening to.

For me this album, and Talking Heads in general, was a real eye-opening experience. They weren’t like the other punk bands, they were out there in left field singing songs about books, making decisions, and civil servants. From here began a life-long love of the Talking Heads, but maybe more importantly, an ear for the more arty punk bands.

A little earlier this evening I made the mistake of going on Instagram and quickly got sucked into the vortex. At some point I stopped to watch a video of Heather Cox Richardson saying that she really wants people to be thinking about what comes next. Kind of warning that if/when it all comes truly crashing down, people need to keep their heads and not look to a strongman to try and restore order. We need to be thinking about building coalitions and pathways for what a better society could look like, and look for an institutionalist with a new vision who will be able to harness those ideas and bring people together around them.

I see the states, across this big nation. I see the laws made in Washington, D.C. I think of the ones I consider my favorites. I think of the people that are working for me.

I do worry, massively, about the government. Everyone always says don’t be cynical, but I have operated on an expect-the-worst mindset for a long time and it’s hard to not do that. I’d like to imagine there’s another Zohran out there; who can come from relative obscurity, articulate a better way of living and how we can make it happen, and inspire the largest turn out of voters in 50 years. But we still have a long way to go before the midterms, or even 2028.

Next to You

The Police – Next to You

I was reading up a little on the early days of the Police and one of the things the Wikipedia article mentioned was how they had tried to shift their sound to be more punk because that was selling in England in 1977.

But they were all much better musicians than those bands. I was always pretty amazed by Stewart Copeland’s drumming. There’s no denying his drumming gave them their signature fast driving sound. But as I listened in the car the last couple of days, I really noticed Sting’s bass playing. You can hear his interest in reggae coming through on some songs. Of course Andy Summers was an accomplished guitar player, and ten years older than Sting and Stewart Copeland.

I suspect that my brother, who had been listening to all the same music I’ve been posting about, actually really liked that the Police were good at their instruments. Even if he loved the Ramones and the middle finger to the establishment that punk had at its center, he also appreciated talented musicians playing more complex songs.

I might be biased because I was young and impressionable but to me, early Police songs sound just like what you want from a band. Like a lot of people, he was less enamored with the later albums. I think he has no use for solo Sting at all.

The other thing I learned from Wikipedia was that Stewart Copeland’s dad was a founding member of the CIA and a raging conservative. His mother had been a UK secret agent during World War II. Wild.

Jet Boy

New York Dolls – Jet Boy

It can’t have been long after the Ramones entered our house before my brother brought home this absolute classic.

Although the New York Dolls self-titled album came out in 1973, pre-dating the Ramones and punk, it often happens that once you are given a peek into a world of music, you start digging in to find more. Alongside the Dolls, my brother was listening to T. Rex, Lou Reed, the Cramps, the Sex Pistols, and of course Bowie was always in there.

Just looking at the album cover would be enough to make you want to know what the record sounded like. The lipstick lettering, campy outfits, the hair and makeup? Put the needle down and Personality Crisis comes screaming out from the speakers. There’s no denying this is just a fantastic debut album that influenced so many other bands.

Judy is a Punk

Ramones – Judy is a Punk

Right place, right time. When it comes to impact on my musical tastes, I think growing up in the New York City suburbs in the 70s is as much a factor as having older siblings. The two go hand in hand. Had we lived somewhere farther away from the epicenter of punk, maybe my siblings would have been listening to cheesy radio rock. Instead we lived just a dozen miles outside the city and my brother was the right age to be totally sold on the Ramones.

It’s not like we actually lived in the city, or like my brother was hanging out at CBGB’s or anything like that. And it was a couple of years after the album came out before my brother had his copy. Before my dad moved out things were pretty strict and the best course of action was to lay low and not make waves. Once my dad moved out my brother grew his hair long, got contact lenses, started wearing ripped jeans, etc.

I don’t have much more to say about the Ramones, other than that they set the stage for the next wave of albums.

Love is the Drug

Roxy Music – Love is the Drug

I was looking for a video of the album version of this song and the first one that comes up is a canned performance on some tv program. It’s amusing, but at least a minute of the song is missing. There were a couple of live versions too but I wanted the footsteps you hear before the song really kicks in.

I am not 100% sure that we had the LP of Siren or if we just had a tape one of my siblings made from a friend. You would think I’d remember Jerry Hall on the rocks, but I’ve seen it so many times over the years that I don’t really know. We definitely had a number of Roxy Music albums but I think my introduction to them all started with this song.

The whole album just seems like quintessential Roxy to me. I know Brian Eno isn’t on this album and it’s not as glam rock as the earlier albums, but Brian Ferry is in fine form. That voice is unlike any other and even though I was too young to really understand all the lyrics, I was captivated by the sound. One of the comments on the video from the tv program video said, “Don’t turn your back, that bassline’s gonna steal your girlfriend.” 😏

Love is the Drug might be the most well known song on the album but the rest of the songs are just as smooth and sexy. It sounds like a sophisticated party that I had managed to sneak into when no one was paying attention. It feels like if I just stayed quiet and out of sight, I would be able to stay up well past my bedtime and see things I was probably not supposed to see.

I didn’t always appreciate having so many older siblings but I definitely learned a lot by being in the room when they were teenagers.

Life on Mars?

David Bowie – Life on Mars?

I gave some thought to going with Diamond Dogs or Ziggy Stardust but I feel like Hunky Dory is really the beginning of my relationship with David Bowie, thanks primarily to my brother.

To me, this album feels like a bridge between the old Bowie, with songs like Fill Your Heart, and the glam rock era with Queen Bitch. Throw in a couple of all time classics like Changes and Life on Mars? and you have a pretty great snap shot of the time. The video must have been shot after the album was released because he is already moving into the Ziggy Stardust look.

David Bowie played a big role in my musical upbringing. Of course there was the actual music itself but you can’t discount his creative genius and the way he reinvented himself every couple of years. I still think about his Saturday Night Live performance with Klaus Nomi and Joey Arias. He really was an artist in every sense of the word.

Truckin’

Grateful Dead – Truckin’

Similar to the difficulty of picking a single James Taylor record for this challenge, picking one Grateful Dead album is kind of impossible. I did some spot checking of the tracks on the albums I remembered but in the end, I decided American Beauty was probably a better representative for my early Dead exposure than the others.

As I mentioned once before, my oldest sister was, and still is, a Deadhead. For a while I contemplated whether to include the Grateful Dead at all in this list of albums that made an impact on my musical tastes because in some respects, they didn’t make a long-lasting impression. I didn’t likewise become a Deadhead, I am not a fan of the long guitar solo, I didn’t go on to really love jam bands. There are these bands that play around here fairly frequently that are wearing their tie-dye proudly and I am always blown away to see them sell out. It’s just not my thing.

However, I think the impact that the Grateful Dead really had on me was their touring. The whole Deadhead culture of just hitting the road to follow your favorite band, seeing as many shows as you can and trading bootlegs with other fans, that is something I could get behind. The Dead placed an importance on their live show that I then came to expect from bands when I was old enough to spend my money on concerts. It was never going to be the same show twice so going to multiple shows was not some crazy idea or a waste of money. You could meet people at the concert who were equally devoted fans, get to talking, and leave the show with an address and an offer to trade tapes.

I can’t say that the Grateful Dead are responsible for my love of concerts and my willingness to travel significant distances to see a band I love. But I feel sure that watching my sister’s dedication to her band, and then going to a Dead show myself with friends, experiencing the parking lot before the show, seeing the tapers at the show, definitely set an example for me.

If you’re a Deadhead maybe you’re sitting there thinking, so live Dead is what influenced you but you’re not using a live album here? I was looking at Europe ’72 because I for sure remember that one, but that version of Truckin’ is nearly 13 minutes long and this one will do just fine.

Sweet Baby James

James Taylor – Sweet Baby James

It’s not that far a jump to go from Peter, Paul and Mary to James Taylor, but the shift here is generational. James marks the start of my siblings’ influence on my taste in music, rather than my parents.

I debated which album to pick for this because this is not my favorite James Taylor album. However, I would guess this was where it all began. I have to guess, because it’s not like I remember one of my sisters bringing it home, it just felt like James Taylor was always in our home. Nor do I think I could really decide which album is my favorite. I have a soft spot for everything up through and including JT. So sure, Sweet Baby James is one of the 20, but it could have been any of the albums he released in the 1970s.

James Taylor has the most mellow voice and great finger-picking skills. His songs have beautiful harmonies that my siblings and I all learned and sang along to on long car trips. If you’re from Massachusetts, and you hear this song, do you also instantly think about driving across the Mass Pike in the winter? Do the Berkshires seem dreamlike on account of that frostin’?

Young James also melted my heart. Long-haired, clean-shaven James created the archetype for what I thought made men attractive. The faint hint of a southern accent also instilled in me a preference for male singers from the south.

I’ve written about James before and I don’t think I can say what I wrote in a better way now so I’ll link to that here.

If I Had a Hammer

Peter, Paul and Mary – If I Had a Hammer

I spent a bunch of time trying to find which Peter, Paul and Mary album was the one I remembered from my childhood. Ten Years Together is not on the streaming services, but all of the others either had songs I didn’t know or were missing songs I remembered. Thanks to the internet, I found this one and it had all the songs I was looking for.

In all honesty, I don’t really remember this album cover but according to the track listing, this has to be the one my dad played frequently when I was young. My dad’s taste in music tended to be less classical than my mom’s and leaned toward folk adjacent and that sort of clean-cut pop from the 60s. So Peter, Paul and Mary singing Bob Dylan songs instead of Bob Dylan. The Kingston Trio, the Mamas & the Papas, Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass, you get the idea. He was a huge John Denver fan and I don’t think I realized at the time that Peter, Paul and Mary’s biggest hit, Leaving on a Jet Plane, was written by John Denver.

Here’s the track listing:

Blowin’ in the Wind [by Bob Dylan]
Too Much of Nothing [by Bob Dylan]
Lemon Tree
Stewball
Early Morning Rain [by Gordon Lightfoot]
500 Miles
I Dig Rock and Roll Music
Leaving on a Jet Plane [by John Denver]
Puff (the Magic Dragon)
For Lovin’ Me [by Gordon Lightfoot]
Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right [by Bob Dylan]
If I Had a Hammer [by Pete Seeger]
Day Is Done

I think what makes this one stand out to me more than an album by one of the other groups my dad liked was the fact that it had Puff (the Magic Dragon) on it. I was a little kid, and that’s a song for little kids. Then there was the super groovy I Dig Rock and Roll Music and I always loved Lemon Tree. I suppose one could argue that John Denver was really a much more prominent artist in my life at that time but I liked that Mary was in Peter, Paul and Mary, making it easy for me to sing along. Something about their voices just really stuck with me. And you know that meme, where people ask what radicalized you? If it wasn’t Captain von Trapp ripping the Nazi flag in half then it was definitely Peter, Paul and Mary singing If I Had a Hammer. The hammer of justice? The bell of freedom? Love between my brothers and my sisters, all over this land? What crazy ideas were put in my head as a young child!

Maple Leaf Rag

Scott Joplin – Maple Leaf Rag

My mother has always played the piano. All of us girls also took piano lessons for at least a year or two when we were young. I only took lessons for two years and begged my mom to be able to quit. I liked playing the piano, I just really hated the teacher.

But one of the reasons I wanted to learn the piano was because of the album Scott Joplin Piano Rags.

The fact that each hand was doing something different and at such a fast speed, kind of blew my mind. We also had the sheet music and my mother could play them, maybe one of my sisters got to the point of learning them, but Joshua Rifkin, who played on the album, just made it sound so effortless. My mother’s middle brother was also a big fan and when we would be at my grandparents for Thanksgiving, he would play a bunch of Scott Joplin rags. I now have the piano that was at my grandma’s house and sometimes I think about getting it tuned and re-learning how to play, and maybe I could get to the point of being able to play The Entertainer, but none of the fast rags.

Speaking of The Entertainer, remember that the movie The Sting, starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford, came out in 1973 and ragtime had a moment. But it never went out of fashion in our family.

When I decided that this needed to be on the list of 20, I listened to the album a few times during my commute and I felt so at ease. My mom also listened to a lot of classical music, but sometimes if I listen to classical music in the car I start to get sleepy. Not so with Scott Joplin. It’s relaxing but lively. I probably hadn’t listened to it in 40 years or so but I knew all the songs and which one was coming next. If you have a long car ride in your future, I recommend giving it a spin.