Greg Brown's Further In
This was a true groundscore. I was at the beach surfing. When I got out of
the water and went to change out of the wetsuit, there by the door of the
van was this CD. I knew who Greg Brown was, but had not really ever heard
his music. A hippie/folkie friend of mine was always raving about the guy,
just enough to turn me off to ever buying a Greg Brown CD on my own. But
here he was -- Mr. Greg Brown saying your time has come. I listened to the CD
all the way home, then obsessively for a few days after that. Frankly, it
re-opened my eyes to folk music and launched me on a Rambling Jack, Guthrie
Family and Dylan jag from which I'm only now recovering.
Andrew Bird's Weather Systems
On the aforementioned Guthrie jag, I drove to Western Massachusetts to the
Guthrie Center to see old friend Kevn Kinney (he's not really an old friend
but he feels like one) play a show with Sarah Lee Guthrie (daughter of
Arlo). It turned out that Ramblin' Jack Elliot was also playing and I would
have sworn on my life that it was the last time I would see him alive. I
wasn't even sure if he would make it through the show. I love Kevn Kinney
and after the show felt the need to see him again, so I was looking over his
website, where he mentioned that he felt Andrew Bird had made some sort of
deal with the devil. Good enough for me, so off to Andrew's site (shameless
plug: www.bowloffire.com) where I listened to "Lull". I ordered every Bird CD
within a week and my family has yet to recover from this new musical
obsession.
Bill Withers' Still Bill
Don't know where it came from or how this vinyl masterpiece ended up in my
vinyl collection. The record jacket includes so many pictures of Bill wearing a brown
leisure suit that I was certain it would be cheesy music. Boy, was I wrong. Bill is
pretty good competition for Barry White in the music to make love by
department. Groundscore!
Edith Piaf
A dusty tape with no label. No idea where it came from. Some chick singing
punk tunes in French from a long time ago. Let's be fair and give her her due as
the founding queen of punk. (Are you sure about that? -- Ed.)
The Flaming Lips' "Frogs"
A friend of mine found a tape that had this song on it. He kept saying,
"Dude, you have to listen to this song." It only took about two seconds of
the song before I knew I loved everything Flaming Lips. "I'm looking at the
sky, waiting on the rain, waiting for the frogs to fall, down on me." One of
my favorite lyrics of all time right there.
Chickasaw Mudd Puppies' 8 Track Stomp
Not really a groundscore in the true sense, but I think they'd
appreciate being called one, wherever they are. This was a case of
the opening band being so much better than the main act that I can't even
recall who the main act was. They were the best two-man band I'd ever seen -- two freaks in tattered clothes, one in a
rocking chair rocking maniacally back and forth like the kid calling the
horse races in D. H. Lawrence's "The Rocking Horse Winner". They completely charmed the room, and by the end of
their 45 minutes they had everyone in the house pressed up against the stage.
They changed my conception of both rock 'n' roll and country music in less
than an hour.
Kornog's Ar Seizh Avel
No clue where this came from. None whatsoever. I might have ordered it, but
I cannot for the life of me think why or how. I still think Corn Dog every
time I see the name. Simply put, this is some of the best Celtic music you'll ever hear. And get this: these guys are from Brittany -- that's in
France, for you geographically challenged folks. Simply beautiful music of the
highest order.
Lee Morgan's Live at the Lighthouse
Drank too much and was sleeping in my wife-to-be's car as she drove home in
the wee hours of the morning. I had one of those, "You're awake but you're
still dreaming," episodes. I'm still not exactly sure what happened, but my
previous flirtations with jazz were blown away when I heard Lee Morgan wailing on
his trumpet. There was something eerily foreboding about the moment, and at
the time I swear I foresaw my own death through the fog of drink and sleep.
Luckily, I have passed my thirty-third birthday without being shot by my
wife.
Neil Young's Harvest/After the Gold Rush
In the category of CDs left at my house by someone -- hopefully I'll never
find out so I won't have to go get my own copies. I didn't think I liked
Neil Young that much. I was wrong.
Every Single Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem Album
I found an abandoned stack of records in a house after someone moved out. The entire
Clancy collection. It took some time to grow on me, but I can now drunkenly
sing "Little Beggarman" in an Irish pub. Hey, we all have to make our mark in
life somehow!
Jimmy Smith's Back at the Chicken Shack
After Hurricane Andrew, there were housing bargains in Miami. Two
friends and I shared a small house three blocks from downtown Coconut Grove
on a double lot with no other occupied houses in the immediate vicinity.
Rent was $33.33 a month per person, including all utilities. To get in the
house you had to walk up this little ramp and through a small door, just
like a chicken shack. A friend dropped off this CD. It became the soundtrack
for our poultry-like existence.
Nirvana's Nevermind
As a college radio DJ in Portland, OR in the early '90s, I was one of the very few who
was playing local music. There was clearly something very cool happening in
the Pacific Northwest music scene, but no one at the radio station seemed to
care or even notice. I was well aware of Nirvana, having worn the shit out of
a cassette copy of Bleach over the summer. One day, when I arrived at the station to do my show, there
was a stack of new CDs, including two copies of a pre-release of Nevermind.
One for me, one for the radio station. The real CD didn't come out for a few
months and even then it took a while to gain traction. Meanwhile, my
roommates and I played the CD constantly. My band at the time even covered a
couple of Nirvana songs that had yet to be released. Groundscore!
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