The Music of My Life

A Facebook friend posted the 15 most influential albums on his own life. Here's mine:

1. Led Zeppelin Led Zeppelin II
At the start of sixth grade, I hit puberty and discovered KQRS, the Twin-Cities longtime rock n roll station. I was head over heals for hard and heavy rock (and, um, Yes), and nothing -- not even Led Zeppelin IV -- rocked me as much as this.

2. Pink Floyd Dark Side of the Moon
So I was home sick during that aforementioned sixth-grade year, and the morning DJ - maybe a little hung over and wanting to not worry about actually programming music - played all of "Dark Side." i'd heard pieces before and read about the album, but hearing it in toto had me hooked. I still have the vinyl copy I picked up soon after, including the posters (the stickers, as I recall, were used on school folders).

3. Replacements Hootenany
You would think growing up in the Twin Cities in the 1980s would have been great for a young music fan, except the likes of Husker Du, the Replacements and even Prince (pre Little Red Corvette) were almost never played on commercial radio. Then again, the sloppy noise here scared me so much I wouldn't listen to the album for years.

4. R.E.M. Murmur
OK, high school now. Pop and rock in 1983 didn't really interest me that much, but I had read about this young, exciting band out of Georgia. I put it on my Christmas list, and lo and behold, it was under the tree. For the balance of high school, I pestered anyone who would listen about the band. (Sorry everyone, but I was right, right?)

5. The Velvet Underground and Nico
Feedback. Guitar sqaulls. Primitive drums and no bass, and Lou Reed and Nico "singing" about drug deals and S&M. What was not to love?

6. Bruce Springsteen Nebraska
An absolute left turn. And a brilliant set of songs.

7. Ramones Ramones
I could easily put "Never Mind the Bollocks" here as well, but I've always liked the Ramones more than the Pistols. So, I was a senior by now, and ready to take the plunge into something a bit harder... it wasn't "Blitzkrieg Bop" that sold me, however -- It was "Beat on the Brat." Again, sorry to my friends who had to listen to me babble about the Ramones the balance of my senior year.

8. Minutemen My First Bells
This is a bit of a cheat, as this is a cassette comp of the early Minutemen records. Still I played this to death (and still have it -- one of about a dozen cassettes I have left). The band plows through 72 songs in less than 90 minutes and the wild vistas of punk were open at last.

9. Motorhead Orgasmatron
My high school friends were very tolerant. This was a favorite through the final months of high school, culminating with an Easter Sunday trip to First Avenue (my first! and a day after I saw Eric Clapton) to hear Lemmy, his warts and the rest of the band hammer through a very, very loud set of music.

10. Metallica Master of Puppets
I commuted from my parents home to the U of M. This tape seemed stuck in my car tape deck/generic walkman for a good chunk of my freshman year. Ever since Zeppelin, I had been searching for music that was harder/louder/faster. Punk was part of that equation, thrash and speed metal were the other.

11. Joy Division Closer
Interestingly enough, a lot of bands/artists I adore (The Beatles, Rolling Stones, Hendrix, the Cure, the Smiths, Elvis Costello, Bob Dylan and so on) didn't have that life changing impact on me. The classic rock bands were on the radio so much that, by the time I bought the albums, they didn't have the same impact. And by the time I got to some of the modern acts, I was picking up large chunks of their discographies at once, so they all kind of merge together. Closer is distinct, however, and Joy Division has remained one of my favorites.

12. Nirvana Smells LIke Teen Spirit.
I almost pulled my car over the first time I heard this tune, I bought the album the day it came out, and my one time seeing Nirvana was on that tour later in the fall, as the band was just taking off. My generation didn't really have a "voice," but Kurt was pretty close.

13. Radiohead OK Computer
I was living in Ashland, Wis. when this came out, so I had to take a trip to Duluth. It was late in the evening when I got home, so I put on the headphones and listened through the album, at least twice. My favorite album from the '90s

14. Grateful Dead American Beauty
I scoffed -- come on, I was a punk rocker -- at the Dead for decades, before actually, you know, listening to the band. While I'll never be a huge fan of their jammy side, I absolute love American Beauty (and Workingman Dead). This didn't change my tastes as much as remind me that I can absolutely wrong.

15. Arcade Fire Funeral
This list is heavily weighed to my early years, which makes sense, as it becomes harder and harder to absolutely surprise the listener. This album did, mainly by not redesigning the wheel, but making the original design better.

And this only scratches the surface, if I'm feeling ambitious later on, maybe I'll tackle specific punk and metal albums, or delve deeper into "classic" rock (and the car stereo I had that only worked in one channel, which made Beatles and Neil Young records an interesting listen.)

Data Panic in the Year Zero

So about the time I was getting ready to buy my house, there was a musical calamity. The hard drive where I held all 40,000 or so of my music files (180+ gigs) went "kerchunk" when I tried to access it, and became a useless door stop.

Let the panic begin.

To make matters worse, after I acquired a new hard drive I figured I could just dump the 70-some gigs of music from my iPod onto the new hard drive and at least have a base. Except I didn't set it up right, and erased everything except the music I had purchased from iTunes.

Oh shit. Oh shit. Oh shit.

Which meant I've started from point zero with my collection. As I've felt overwhelmed for some time by it, this isn't entirely a bad thing. I plan to take my time over the next few months to rebuild it into something trimmer -- with music I may actually listen to, instead of everything that just sounds interesting. I thought about being orderly about it -- only loading so many tunes each day (my day job allows me to listen to music, so I can get through a bunch), and in some kind of coherent fashion -- but instead decided it was best to just wing it, the way you may play music that excites you for a friend.

A couple of weeks down, there are about 1,500 songs already loaded. I'm trying to listen to it all, but there are some albums I know I want no matter what. Still, I'm trying to slowly load even those acts,  adding Bruce Springsteen and David Bowie in the last couple of weeks, and even trimming those collections (David, "Tonight," why?) So, I'll chime in every so often on what I've discovered so far. 

Oh, and the title of this post reminds me that I need to track down my Pere Ubu.

The next Doctor is... Matt Smith

Leave it to Steven Moffat and crew to pick the unexpected. After months of speculation, with a bevy of names mentioned (including former companions Billie Piper and Catherine Tate), the crew picked the relatively unknown Matt Smith for the show's top post. Here's what the BBC has to say.

Smith is the youngest Doctor ever -- at 26, he's three years younger than Peter Davison when he first took the role -- but does come with a body of work, including turns with Piper (in a pair of Phillip Pullman adaptations) and on stage, where he has picked up excellent notices in a number of works. Still, he's not been on my radar, so impressions of his acting will have to wait.

Moffat gave some clues as to where the character may go: "As soon as Matt walked through the door, and blew us away with a bold and brand new take on the Time Lord, we knew we had our man."

Hmm, athletic (Smith wanted to a professional footballer), young and rocking an emo haircut? I venture to guess that romance isn't going away from the TARDIS anytime soon.

That's Sir Terry to you

Discworld author and all-around great chap Terry Pratchett is now a knight of the realm. Read about it (with typically English fussiness) here and here. You can also find more about Pratchett in general and his efforts to battle Alzheimer's disease (he suffers from early onset Alzheimer's) at his official web site, right here.

Merry Christmas, but...

Harold Pinter has died. The Noble winner was among the finest playwrights of the 20th century and a huge influence on my writing and worldview. Here's what the New York Times has to say, along with the AP.

Here's his Noble speech from 2005.

I got to see Pinter on stage  in "The Hothouse" while in London in 1995. Though one of his early plays, "The Hothouse" has the trademarks of his work -- a plot that needs to be puzzled out by the viewer, an off-kilter world view and unexpected flashes of humor. Here's a pic of Pinter and John Sharpnel from the production (taken from Pinter's official website).

Go see this show, even if I didn't like it

Photo is by Rob Levine.
Pictured are Namir Smallwood, Matthew Rein, Jahi Kearse, Keith Hale and Traci Allen

You won’t find grades – or stars, or digits in one position or another, or even an adorable little man – attached to any of my reviews. There are a couple of reasons for this. First off, I know from my own experience that grades lead to readers not actually reading what you wrote. “Hey, it’s a three-star review, sounds boring. Let’s go on to the next thing.” Or they become so watered down as to be meaningless (this could be called the Rolling Stone 3 ½ Star Syndrome).

The main reason, however, is that something as simple as a grade often isn’t adequate to describe the experience. This is especially true in theater, where so many elements are fused together for a whole. You can have great acting, but boring direction; the set may be exquisite, but the actors are off; the production is top notch, but the script doesn’t work. And even those examples aren’t nearly as nuanced as the entire experience.

Which brings me to “Five Fingers of Funk,” the latest original work presented by the Children’s Theatre Company. Created by award-winning artist Will Power (his “FLOW” was a big hit in recent years), “Five Fingers of Funk” is at times thrilling, engaging, staid, boring and cringe-inducing, sometimes all within the same scene. It’s a grab bag of influences, emotions and story lines that don’t mesh together at all. It’s a show I ultimately didn’t like, but one that I think would be a valuable show for people to see, especially those with an interest in musical theater or the soul/funk/early disco sounds of the early 1970s.

What’s good? The five members of the teenage band at the center of the story are fresh and engaging, with solid musical and acting chops. The music – crafted by Power and composer Justin Ellington – often find the groove. And the production does a fine job of evoking the era via some epic threats.

What’s not? Well, there is the plot, which sticks close to an after-school special path and never really digs into any of the characters’ hearts. The path of destruction for band leader Poppo is clearly telegraphed from the earliest scenes, and the other kids are often just representations of their various places in society (the angry militant; the token white guy) as fully fleshed character.

Those descriptions don’t even do this justice. Some of the songs are so on point lyrically as to strip them of their power, such as an otherwise lovely duet between lone-female Ruby and the mother of talented-but-shy Big Ced. While at times the characters and story come into focus, revealing a much deeper, if potentially darker, story underneath.

Ultimately, the reason I would recommend people see the show – despite all of my misgivings about the production – is the potential. There’s a great nucleus of material here – songs, the starts of characters, a storyline loaded with ideas if not focus – and plenty of food for thought. So I think it’s worth taking a chance on “Five Fingers of Funk,” just don’t ask me to give it a grade.


What: Five Fingers of Funk
Who: Children’s Theatre Company
Where: 2400 3rd Ave. S., Minneapolis
When: Through Nov. 16
Tickets: $14-$29
Phone: 612-874-0400
Online