So if I could only have 5 albums (Is this a thing anymore? Do kids buy albums, today?) on a desert Island, for the rest of my life.
In alphabetical order by album title, because love is love:
Cocteau Twin’s Blue Bell Knoll Boston’s Boston Rush’s Moving Pictures Peter Gabriel’s So Depeche Mode’s Violator
None of these are recent. And this is because, even though I still love some music, the affection changes. Sometimes albums don’t grow with you, they are of a time and place that was special and important, but past. Yet still others still give endorphins in the best way and I still don’t want them to end. There are newer favorites that haven’t stood enough of a test, yet.
If I had to pick a top ten or a top twenty I would have much more angst because it would really be splitting hairs.
Carolyn’s Fingers was the first Cocteau Twins song I had ever heard. Well I saw the video on MTV. And I knew immediately I needed to hear more. I think I own all of their albums, any several EPs, but probably not all of them quite yet. Blue Bell Knoll was the first album of theirs I bought, though there are few that I don’t love.
The Boston pick is harder to explain. But I did have a unique experience with this record that I have almost never otherwise had. I was dubbing a copy of my Friend’s record that I could play on my boombox. My friend and I were listening as the tape was recording. My dad walked into the living room with us and I glanced at my friend and rolled my eyes. My assumption was that my dad was going to reduce the volume. He was often wanting me to turn my choice of music down, or preferably off. Headphones was an acceptable compromise. However, he went to the receiver and turned it up. I was gobsmacked. I love the album and I’ve said it before but for whatever reason it always evokes for me the perfect summer day, no matter the season or my internal state. I don’t love every Boston album, but this first one is wonderful.
I think I have memorized Moving Pictures. There isn’t a track that I would skip. Also? My first copy was dubbed from the same friend that had the Boston record. I own vinyl and CD, today, as one used to do. I have loved Rush more and less, but I did see them live and I own a majority of their studio albums. I will listen to any track or the whole album eagerly, anticipating every bass note, every drum roll, and every guitar solo.
Peter Gabriel’s So hit me at a transitional time in my life, the last summer before I went to college, in that sort of triumphant space before the weight of being responsible for my life hit me with a wallop, yet where naïvely I had dreams of some sort of grandeur. I have spent a lot of hours of my life listening to this.
Violator is probably my favorite Depeche Mode album, though I have listened to DM since Some Great Reward was new. I was a superfan for a year or two in the 1990s. Would love to re-watch Depeche Mode: 101 again. I think Ultra is a close second from their oeuvre. I was just thinking about favorite favorite albums and this one stuck.