More 25 things

Awoke this morning with my voice a nice cross between Lauren Bacall and Barry White (everybody is like me and wakes up singing, yes?). Still not 100 per cent, but feeling better tonight (despite the rainy weather outside my window and "losing" an hour because of daylight savings time). It's been something of a lost weekend while I tend to this cold/flu - and my throat is still raw - but it's good and healthy to have the occasional low-key, nesting weekend. I'll be back to the grind tomorrow.

I've been working on my list of the 25 albums that changed my life which my friend P. tagged me on facebook. I've cheated a bit and created a list of what I consider the most significant albums from my life. Some did change my life, others didn't. But they all conjure up a time and place.

I'm still 5 short (and they are more or less in chronological order), largely because I fear I'm missing several important ones - I need a night to sleep on it. But here are the first 20:

1. The Roaring Silence – Manfred Mann. The first album I ever purchased with my own money. My dad picked it up for me from the downtown Montreal Sam the Record Man on St. Catherine's (long since gone). I wanted it because I loved the song “Blinded by the Light.” Naturally, I had no idea at the time it was a Springteen composition. I still have the album (it has a great cover).

2. The Beatles greatest hits (the two volumes with the red and blue bordered covers). I listened to these two albums non-stop when I was around 8 or 9. I particularly loved the son “Lady Madonna,” and would play “air piano” to it. And “Paperback Writer.”

3. YMCA – The Village People. Conjures up memories of both early mornings in the living room in our house in Dollard des Ormeaux, where I'd listen to the VP on headphones, but also roller skating at Caeser's Palace in Pointe Claire. Carefree days indeed when one had to summon up the requisite courage to ask a girl to skate the last song with you...

4. Scoop – Pete Townshend. The Who's Townshend started the Scoop series back in the early 1980s. Basically it was a project that collected his demos for The Who, as well as assorted oddities. I bought this as a cassette on a grade 8 school trip to Quebec City – at the same everybody else was buying the Kinks live tape (there was a cult around the song “Lola,” started by one of the “cool” popular kids at school – and listened to it over and over again on the long overnight bus ride back to Toronto. Started my own obsession with Townshend, particularly with some of his more obscure and creative endeavours. He's since released two more Scoop recordings. (My favourite Townshend album: Empty Glass.)

5. Tommy – The Who. I tend to do things in reverse, so after discovering Townshend, I began my exploration of The Who. This was the first recording I bought of theirs I bought, which is why it's so special. Began my life-long love of the band. (My favourite album(s): Who's Next and The Who by Numbers.)

6. Synchronicity – The Police. Only on this list because I adored this recording when it first came out. And still do. Finally got to see The Police a couple of years ago.

7. Grace Under Pressure – Rush. If I had to pick a favourite Rush album, it would obviously be Moving Pictures. But GUP means more to me, if only because it was the album I listened to over and over before going to my very first rock concert: Rush at Maple Leaf Gardens, touring in support of GUP. The opening act: Red Rider (before they were Tom Cochran and Red Rider). My seat mate: DG (RIP).

8. Greatest Hits – Simon and Garfunkel. Some of these songs helped me survive the darkest days of high school: “America,” “I Am a Rock,” “Kathy's Song.”

9. A&M Classics – Cat Stevens. A collection of Cat Stevens' greatest hits. On the list less for the music (although there are still songs on this I listen to frequently: “The Wind,” “On the Road to Find Out,” “Oh Very Young”) than for the memories it conjures of the summer of 1988 with my first “serious” girlfriend, S. I don't think there was a night when we fell asleep before 3:00 in the morning. (We also listened often to Bruce Cockburn's greatest hits that summer.)

10, Astral Weeks – Van Morrison. Like many, I discovered Van the Man through the album Moondance. (My dad, for one, loved the song “Into the Mystic.” I'm more partial to “Caravan.”) Astral Weeks was a whim buy at Sam the Record Man after class. I probably should have known more about this recording – particularly since I was in the throes of discovering jazz (and the album has heavy jazz influences) – but I was largely ignorant of this masterwork.

11. 'Round About Midnight – Miles Davis. The very first jazz recording I bought on CD, when I was about 17. I knew about jazz since my dad was a fan, and I began my own exploration via the library (where my friend P. and I would go every week to take out music cassettes), but this was the first jazz album I owned. Naturally I enjoy Davis' Kind of Blue more, but one never forgets their first...

12. The Koln Concert – Keith Jarrett. I bought this album and KJ's Standards Live during a lazy afternoon at a fantastic secondhand store (long since out of business) on Dundas, east of Church. I didn't know much about Jarrett, except by reputation. (And, strangely, he's mentioned in the linear notes on one of Townshend's Scoop albums.) What revelation this album was! I only found out later that the success of this album basically funded ECM Records for about 25 years. It started me on my continuing journey through Jarrett's incredible music. The Standards album is great too (I've only since purchased the CD version).

13. Powaqqatis – Philip Glass. Probably the strangest one on this list. For one, many consider this soundtrack (and the film) far inferior to the first one in the series, Koyaanisqatsi. But I still love the hypnotic repetitiveness of the score. This album would often keep me company during my first and second year of undergrad, especially when I was wandering through the city streets before and after class.

14. The Ninth Symphony – L.V. Beethoven. Can't remember precisely which “album” I first discovered this monumental piece (although I first heard snippets of it in Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange), but this was the first piece of classical music that I absolutely fell in love with, when I was about 21. Naturally there's also an association with a woman: the wonderful red-headed PMC. I wrote her a love letter while listening to the wonderful fourth movement, which still moves me (especially the quieter passages near the beginning).

15. Hot Rocks – The Rolling Stones. I'm not a huge Stones fan (although “Gimme Shelter” is one of the all-time great rock songs), but this makes the list because of a wild, fun weekend (full of quickie one-off romances) with five of my then-closest friends to celebrate the end of our undergrad years. We danced endlessly to this album, while drinking terrible white wine (Black Tower from Germany). The weekend also spawned the classic line while dancing: “Come on, take off your pants!”

16. Gordon – Barenaked Ladies. Still fresh today, but back then it was a recording I listened to often when travelling to the Beach to my very first job out of undergrad (at a small publishing house). It was such a novelty to be out of school and making money (it still is, actually), and this album will forever remind me of those heady days.

17. Madman Across the Water – Elton John. Recorded in 1970 when Elton was great (and svelte). I think I listened to this CD every day for six months when I first moved into my very first bachelor apartment on Walmer Rd. It conjures independence, and discovering how I was going to lead the life of an adult.

18. The Beatles (The White Album) – The Beatles. The only band that gets two entries. Along with the above Madman, I listened to this almost everyday for many months, usually when I was making dinner and drinking a beer. I'm still hoping to name a daughter Prudence.

19. Us – Peter Gabriel. The most underrated of PG's recordings. It's also his most personal and emotional album (coming on the heels of the breakdown of his first marriage). Like many on this list, however, it also comes with a vivid personal memory: a five-week sojourn in England. I put this on, and I can't help but reminisce about walking the streets of London in a November light rain. Ah, the light. (Two other recordings which also remind me of that time in England, largely because I bought both of them secondhand in London: Sarah McLachlan's Solace and I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got by Sinead O'Connor.)

20. The United Artists Collection - Gordon Lightfoot. There was a very cold winter when H. and I drank cognac and I listened to this collection almost every night on the headphones. Just listening to the first strains (the acoustic and Lightfoot coming in with "Going to buy me a long white robe, yes lord to help me home." It brings me home too, to my early 20s which, upon reflection, were glorious years (albeit with not very much money!).

More to come...