Five Albums That Changed Your Life

[reece]

This is the best Black Flag release, it's also the second one i ever listened to after Damaged. This record opened my eyes to a new level of punk rock beyond fast tempos and screaming about cops. As Greg Ginn wrote on the back of this record even without lyrics or obscene imagery "Cop Types" with linear minds will see this record as a threat. How genius is that! i remember being like 15 and going to find a black flag shirt at a rock shop and amongst all the classic ones picking this one because it really stood out and always will.





First Cd i ever stole from my mum. i was like 13 or summat and i thought it was fucking HEAVY, Ians vocals have always struck me. It took a while for this record to make more sense to me, I pretty much had to go back and experience Minor Threat and Embrace and then I really got down.







Like two years ago i wasn't that into death metal and then I heard this album. I listen to this album a few times a week now.





I owe so much to wolf and danni, two of the hardest working people in the community who do not get enough credit. The first LP is one of the most destructive assualts on my ears ever.


I cant decide on a legit 5th record so....

[dave mac]

just in terms of hardcore


Listened to this religiously when I was in 8th Grade. Skateboarding soundtrack. Didn't realize I was listening to hardcore, called it metal, but it was clearly my favourite... continued to listen to it and then 4 years later a friend gave me a vinyl copy of this:



and then I bought this @ A&B sound on cd:

no real explanation needed.

then I got into 90's metal core pretty hard for a minute and then I heard:

and although it is pretty metalic, when I heard it, I compared it to Minor Threat (fast hardcore) and I realized that people still played hardcore like that.

at the same time this band got good:

and I think their influence on most of my generation of vancouver hardcore is pretty clear.

[dave mac]

3-boysetsfire "After the Eulogy"
When I was 19, a bunch of my friends went to a Sepultura show, and the opening band was some heavy hardcore outfit from Cincinnati (I can't remember who to save my life) and they all instantly got into hardcore. My friend Joe had started getting into it a little earlier, and so had a decent record collection of the more accessible stuff. He knew how much I loved DK, so he played these guys version of "Holiday in Cambodia". I loved it, and went to buy the EP it was off of ("In Chrysalis") but couldn't find it and so settled on this one instead. Which is good, because this album is infinitely better than In Chrysalis, and is what got me into hardcore in the first place. What up, 2000?

man I used to LOVE Boy Sets Fire this was my main jam:

I still have my BSF windbreaker in my closet. It's funny, I find BSF almost unlistenable now, it's so cheesy and, well bad (in my opinion)... Most stuff like this from the 90's is like that for me now. I remember the CD for this record had a write up right on the CD about why it was important to stay DIY... and then the next record was on Victory... LOL.

[Hollow]

3-boysetsfire "After the Eulogy"
When I was 19, a bunch of my friends went to a Sepultura show, and the opening band was some heavy hardcore outfit from Cincinnati (I can't remember who to save my life) and they all instantly got into hardcore. My friend Joe had started getting into it a little earlier, and so had a decent record collection of the more accessible stuff. He knew how much I loved DK, so he played these guys version of "Holiday in Cambodia". I loved it, and went to buy the EP it was off of ("In Chrysalis") but couldn't find it and so settled on this one instead. Which is good, because this album is infinitely better than In Chrysalis, and is what got me into hardcore in the first place. What up, 2000?

man I used to LOVE Boy Sets Fire this was my main jam:

I still have my BSF windbreaker in my closet. It's funny, I find BSF almost unlistenable now, it's so cheesy and, well bad (in my opinion)... Most stuff like this from the 90's is like that for me now. I remember the CD for this record had a write up right on the CD about why it was important to stay DIY... and then the next record was on Victory... LOL.

I completely agree. BSF was so fucking important to me when I first heard them, and they definitely were one of those bands that seriously got me into hardcore, but I don't think I've actually been able to listen to them without laughing for a while. The Day the Sun Went Out was mindblowing when I heard it first. Now it just seems so...so fucking bad. Also, yes, legit LOL at them being on Victory. I still listen to After the Eulogy on occasion, but I only make it about half way through now. Ah well, growin' up is hard to do.

[shakehurst]

[CodyCreepcore]

Iskra has to cover a Collective Soul song

haha. maybe "Gel" with blast beats and screaming

[darcy]

Goldfinger - Darrin's Coconut ass

...This was the first CD I ever bought with money I had saved up (I had CDs before this: Weird Al, Prozzak, my brother had bought me some Chemical Brothers and Daft Punk). I enjoyed the song "Superman" from Tony Hawk's pro Skater on N64, and I wanted to hear more from this band. I went to A&B Sound with what I had saved up from that week's chores. I bought this particular album because it was on sale for $9.99. Not only is it a wicked-ass cover album, but it inspired my to venture further and find the original source material.


Anti-Flag - Mobilize

My parents split up when I was very young, and I spent most of my time with my mom. She was involved with all sorts of political activities and frequently held meetings at her house. She was involved with a group which I now am also with - International Socialists (www.socialist.ca), but at the time I only new the word and that it was to be attached to concepts such as freedom, dignity, and equality.
I was reading some sort of magazine (probably AP or something) and saw that a review of this band had these words in it. I was intrigued. I bought the album, listened to the lyrics, scanned the inserts and additional content. This changed me.


The Slackers - Live at Ernesto's

I had been listening to my Goldfinger CD over and over and had found the other 'main' 3rd-wave groups (Reel Big Fish, Less Than Jake, Catch 22, etc). I was pretty sure that when someone said "ska", that this was what they meant. I woman who was an activist friend of my mom's asked if I had ever heard, what she called, 'real ska' (but not in a holier-than-thou fashion). She suggested a band called The Slackers. Once again, it seemed at A&B Sound that this record was the best bang for my buck. I bought it and instantly felt the amazingness of this band. They just seemed so....good. The songs and lyrics were brilliant, and the musicianship was the best I had ever heard. This made me the big loser for ska that I am today.



The Decemberists - Cast Aways and Cutouts

When I first started going to shows I also started going to open-mic nights, just to see any sort of music. A friend of mine had a friend who was doing a first 'show'. He was pretty good and did a decent Leonard Cohen cover. What really got me was this song he did called "The Legionnaire's Lament". He only prefaced the song with its statement as a cover, but left me having to find out more. With the help of the internet and what lyrics I remembered (mostly "...missing my gay Paris...") I tracked down the song. I downloaded a few more tunes by this band with a unique sound, and I was hooked. I went down to Ditch and bought their first two albums. I still think, not only this band, but all of the bands on this list are amazing.



Radiohead - Ok Computer

This should really be before The Decemberists, but if you read this that will be good enough.
Bryan and I used to be huge Radiohead fans. While He was more of a fan of prog-rock/metal and I would always try to make him listen to my One Drop CD, Radiohead was one of the bands we were both big fans of (though he got my listening to some awesome Pink Floyd, Yes, and ELP). This CD, to me, was the tops. A little more 'out there' than The Bends, but a little more 'in there' than Kid A. Though I think I prefer Kid A (and Hail to the Thief on top of that), OKC remains a very special record to me, as do all of the ones I've listed.


Wow, that was actually really fun to do and think about. Thanks for making the thread!

[Crucified]

in no order, mostly regulated to only "heavy" bands as i could go on for days with albums that have changed not only how i think about music but how i feel about life.

1 - nirvana - nevermind. catchy, mean and apathetic. perfect for a preteen me.

2 - cannibal corpse - vile - the first death metal album that i heard from start to finish that made me want to fuck and kill at the same time.

3 - marilyn manson - smells like children - taught me that shock rock wasn't just alice cooper.

4 - nine inch nails - downward spiral - taught me that nine inch nails are better than everyone

5 - pig destroyer - Prowler in the Yard - grindcore doesn't have to have shitty production. GRINDCORE DOES NOT HAVE TO HAVE SHITTY PRODUCTION. also, vocalists don't really need p.a's

[shakehurst]

grindcore doesn't have to have shitty production.

thank you.

[grind/bro]

agree on the "Nine Inch Nails are better than everyone" thing.

[keep_it_real]

- so i was probably around 9 or 10 when the mighty ducks came out, and sure enough i was convinced that coach gordon bombay himself, mr emilio estevez was THE MAN. my dad, being the kinda dude who took me to record stores at a very young age and allowed me to pick stuff out. on one such occasion, i ended up seeing this tape and figured that if emilio had something to do with this, it probably ruled. sure enough, i ended up getting dad to buy it for me, and went home and listened to it over and over again. i loved the suicidal tendencies, black flag and juicy bananas songs, and this really started a huge interest in heavier music. i would go on to buy a bunch of suicidal tapes, and still to this day feel the most nostalgic about still cyco after all these years, which is arguably pretty bad.



- around the same time, i was also really interested in rap music. my school had banned it from being played at jump rope for heart, i guess because of "b-boying" according to the principle. there was a store in town that sold used tapes and cds, as well as drug paraphernalia (and drugs, but i had no idea then). I used to go there all the time and get tapes, many of which were pretty recent and AWESOME. in one trip i remember getting wu tang's 36 chambers, ice cube's predator and lethal injection.

i'd also spend my friday nights listening/recording a university radio show called "the eight ball" that played hip hop. since it was a late show that started at midnight, i had to keep the volume on my playskool tape deck pretty low. i'd also call in and make requests, but change my voice to sound older because i thought it was fucked up that a ten year old was making requests for ice cube remixes (that i only had access to by taping off the radio). years later, when i started doing shows at the same station, i was amazed at the seeing the same records i heard so long ago.



- this shit just blew my mind the first time i heard it. probably one of the few tapes that i haven't listened to in years but could remember most of the lyrics if i heard it. i spent alot of highschool listening to "texas beats" as my dad would call them. anything dj screw related, s.u.c., ugk, lil troy, lil keke, psd, esg, botany boys, scarface, geto boys etc etc, i was loving it. since i lived close to northern new york, i had access to stores that actually sold this stuff, as it was pretty hard to come by (and expensive!) in canada. hell, the luckiest i would get with buying rap would be the stolen cds (from college stations) that would show up at pawn shops or used music stores.



- my buddy todd gave me a copy of this album years ago, which was kinda odd because he was way more into punk when we were younger. he'd been jamming with these older dudes (one of them would later end up on that tv show "crash addicts" lolz) and they played this alot. songs like "troops of doom" made me really dig on that raw metal sound. i definitely was more interested in finding out more and more about metal from places that weren't north america after hearing it. subsequently got into bathory, obituary, lots of bands with "ry" at the end.




- like zach, i could probably go on and on about it, but i'll just say that this album is 100% awesome.

[stumped.]

In order of my experiencing them...

Good Charlotte-the Young and the Hopeless

i'm from langley like the twins but at least they lived in the gritty downtown area with A&B sound and HMV, i'm from walnut grove. I really just had much music to go by. and not even the late night shows like the wedge or the punk show (because i was a goody two shoes and i followed my curfew to a T). just daytime shows like much on demand, so if it wasn't for "the anthem" hitting the charts when i was like 11 or 12 i probably wouldn'tve gotten into punk rock period.

Bad Brains-Banned in DC (rior tape? S/T?)

when i was in 9th grade one of my friends played this for me in our art class and it made me want to listen to hardcore. after bad brains i listened to minor threat, then black flag, then so on and so forth. it got me out of the pre-teen pop punk rut and tuned me into hardcore. plus the idea of a band who had a lead signer doing backflips thrilled the shit out me.

the Blood Brothers-Crimes

this album got me into weirder stuff. i didn't like march of the electric children that much when i first listened to it so i moved onto Crimes and it just blew my mind. without the blood brothers i wouldn'tve gotten into hip-hop, powerviolence, emo... pretty much any fringe genre that i love now i found because i wanted to hear more music that was remotely similar to the blood brothers. also, by google-searching for bands like the blood brothers i found out about fake shark real zombie, which prompted me to start going to local shows and eventually led me to the hardcore scene.

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds-From Her to Eternity

my art teacher loaned this to me in 11th grade and it took awhile to grasp, but once i did it completely changed my opinions on how songs could be written. its not my favorite nick cave album (that'd have to be Tender Prey or Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!), but it was just outside my comprehension that it made me want to understand it without turning me off of his music completely.

P.O.S.-Audition

this was another game changer in 11th grade. its so raw, emotionally honest and political it blew my mind, AND it was a rap album. this record convinced me it was cool to have a really diverse musical taste. without this album i'd probably still be in denial about loving bluegrass and pop.

of course there are others like Damaged and Repeater+3 Songs and Reinventing Axl Rose and Epics in Minutes and stuff but i think anyone who listened to those had a pretty strong reaction to them. i think these ones are more personal roots of everything i listen to now.

[JODI]

TROY and TYLER: Lending you my hardcore CDs in high school was so exciting to me. You guys were/are the coolest.

I'm going to try this.


Black sails comes first because I was just talking about this record tonight. Um. I had a duotang filled with all of the lyrics that I had printed out. I had that shit memorized. I was the lamest, most embarrassing teenager in the world. I blame AFI solely for that phase, but before this record/band, I was probably happier and had more friends. So yeah, it changed my life. (I still love you Davey)


In '98 my brother bought this record and made our parents play it in our mini van the entire trip from Regina to Wisconsin. We were so pumped on the poo poo jokes that the first mall we pulled into, we both left some hip store with blink 182 tshirts. Mine was baby blue and had a giant sparkly butterfly on it. I think this is one of the only albums I've consistently listened to for like 14 years of my life and enjoyed it the entire time. Way to go Blink 182.


10 year old Jodi stole this from my brothers best friend. I think he looked for it every day he was over for like a month. It was in my dresser drawer without its case, in case you were wondering. I worshipped this album so much that my friend Jamie and I rushed off 3 years later and got matching Strung Out tattoos. I was the only kid in elementary school with siqq ink, if you can believe it. Strung out, thanks for changing my life. Permanently.


My first memories of music are of Michael Jackson's, and Queen's Greatest Hits. My mother played them both repeatedly for me as a youngster. Then came Wayne's World. They're cruising in The Mirthmobile jamming to Bohemian Rhapsody. I wanted to live that life, listen to that music, and be that cool. I'm still trying to be that cool to this day.

4s good enough for now.

[Tambro]

TROY and TYLER: Lending you my hardcore CDs in high school was so exciting to me. You guys were/are the coolest.

I'm going to try this.


Black sails comes first because I was just talking about this record tonight. Um. I had a duotang filled with all of the lyrics that I had printed out. I had that shit memorized. I was the lamest, most embarrassing teenager in the world. I blame AFI solely for that phase, but before this record/band, I was probably happier and had more friends. So yeah, it changed my life. (I still love you Davey)


In '98 my brother bought this record and made our parents play it in our mini van the entire trip from Regina to Wisconsin. We were so pumped on the poo poo jokes that the first mall we pulled into, we both left some hip store with blink 182 tshirts. Mine was baby blue and had a giant sparkly butterfly on it. I think this is one of the only albums I've consistently listened to for like 14 years of my life and enjoyed it the entire time. Way to go Blink 182.


10 year old Jodi stole this from my brothers best friend. I think he looked for it every day he was over for like a month. It was in my dresser drawer without its case, in case you were wondering. I worshipped this album so much that my friend Jamie and I rushed off 3 years later and got matching Strung Out tattoos. I was the only kid in elementary school with siqq ink, if you can believe it. Strung out, thanks for changing my life. Permanently.


My first memories of music are of Michael Jackson's, and Queen's Greatest Hits. My mother played them both repeatedly for me as a youngster. Then came Wayne's World. They're cruising in The Mirthmobile jamming to Bohemian Rhapsody. I wanted to live that life, listen to that music, and be that cool. I'm still trying to be that cool to this day.

4s good enough for now.

Let's drive around and blast bohemian rhapsody blazing a storm. We can be that cool.

[CodyCreepcore]

i definatly listened to Strungout's Twisted by design wayyyyyyyy too much in highschool.

[kay]

Like a lot of you, I tried to choose 5 albums that were important to me at different points in my life in chronological order. With a few exceptions, I rarely listen to any of this stuff anymore and I doubt that these are really the 5 most important albums to me but here goes...

1. Grade 8:

My parents were jocks and never really paid attention to music so, unlike a lot of people, I wasn't raised on King Crimson or Yes or anything cool like that. However, I did find this gem in my dads old CD collection. I used to have a man-made lake near my house in the suburbs of Calgary and I would walk to the beach in a sarong with a fucking BOOM BOX blasting this shit. I still love almost every song on this CD.

1. "Good Times Bad Times"
2. "Babe I'm Gonna Leave You"
3. "Dazed and Confused"
4. "Communication Breakdown"
5. "Whole Lotta Love"
6. "What Is and What Should Never Be"
7. "Immigrant Song"
8. "Since I've Been Loving You"
9. "Black Dog"
10. "Rock and Roll"
11. "The Battle of Evermore"
12. "When the Levee Breaks"
13. "Stairway to Heaven"

Robert Plants vocals are...just...fuck.

Around this time was also really into Sum 41. I don't wanna waste my time and become another casualty of society! Yeah!

2. Grade 9:

I heard Dead Disco on MTV late one night and I was hooked. I loved Emily Haines strange, sad voice and her lyrics were clever, sweet and just political enough for my 9th grader self to relate to. That part in IOU about a 10 year old enemy soldier thinking falling bombs are shooting stars always got me.
Other candidates for this spot: this was the year I went to my first show, Alexisonfire opened by Crowned King. I fucking loved Alexisonfire and when they released their album Watch Out around this time I was delighted to find most of the songs were named after stories in Welcome To The Monkey House by Kurt Vonnegut which I had just finshed reading. I felt very in the know. This was also the year I got reeeally into Le Tigre. Little did I know as I danced around to Deceptacon in my bedroom that the vocalist of this band had a way cooler project, Bikini Kill. I could have saved myself years of time with a simple google search but it's too late to fret about that now. Onward to...

3. Summer before grade 10:

I bought this after seeing an MTV video for New Noise. It was the heaviest thing I had heard at the time and it's still a favorite. My only complaint about this CD is that Rather Be Dead isn't on it.

4. Grade 10:

I finally found Calgary's all ages music scene. At the time Sudden Infant Dance Syndrome was playing practically every week. They played fast silly powerpop influenced tunes and we all danced like crazy. There were special dance moves you could only know by...just knowing, you know? The band was composed of dreamy 12th graders that I could never talk to. I still thought that everyone in a band was at least somewhat famous.

Midway through grade 10 I quit highschool, moved into a punk house and started going to Food Not Bombs all the time. Cue two years of hitchhiking around, This Bike Is A Pipe Bomb and Defiance, Ohio until...

5. What would have been the year after high school

I broke up with my boyfriend, stopped going to Food Not Bombs and moved in with some kids I barely knew. I had met them through Lana, an older punk girl who had shown me Ian MacKaye. She was moving to Vancouver and the old tenants of her house were getting a new house. They knew a lot more about music than I did. It was through them (or at least around this time) that I discovered pretty much everything I've listened to ever since. It's hard to pick just one album from this time period. I chose "The Argument" because I wanted to choose something by Ian MacKaye (the Lana connection) and because I listened to this album while high on shrooms and cross country skiing through the mountians one night. It was perfect.

[CodyCreepcore]

that refused album is great

[dalamar501]

Great post Kay.

Yeah i think for the most part i don't really listen to any of the ones on my list anymore at all for my post it was just posting the stages i went through in changing or discovering my choices in music

That Fugazi album is amazing.

[Hollow]

I found The Argument on vinyl at Ditch for $5 because there was a tear in the corner of the cover. Great fucking album.