albums that have changed my life

this will be an occasional series on the music that has meant the most to me.  anna and i have rediscovered music in the past 6 or so years and have been going to concerts again.  we will see The Postal Service next month in support of the 10th anniversary of their album give up.  90s alt-rockers Toad the Wet Sprocket will also play in a smaller venue that is only a few blocks from our house the day after The Postal Service gig, and i'm thinking have walking down to see the toadies just for the hell of it.

color me impressed with poet paul muldoon and his band wayside shrines.  actually i listend to a couple of their tunes and they ain't bad.  besides muldoon has always been obsessed with pop music.  i have several of his books, the most recent in my possession is hay [fsg; 1998], in which muldoon writes short poems in the service of liner notes.  i've lost touch with what muldoon was up to until i read that he has a new book of rock lyrics.  okay, then.

why not.  thurston moore and lee ranaldo are musicians that have published some pretty good poems.  and i am waiting for a few musicians like shane macgowan, tom verlaine, andy partridge, nick lowe and elvis costello to write books.  don't know if these rockers will write books but they have the chops to do it and i for one will be the first in line to buy their books. 

so later i'll begin with the first album that literally changed how i hear and see the world.  there will be punk albums, electronica, post-punk, rock, a little heavy metal.  some albums will be ancient and some quite recent.  they will all be pop music.  i have a great appreciation for classical music and jazz but it's pop that's the shit for me.  when i was starting to write a few of my colleagues were writing poems in praise of mingus and charlie parker.  that's fine but that wasn't the music that stirred my soul.  in fact, writing about jazz musicians when you are 18 or so appeared to be a little preening because you have read your ginsberg and keroauc and they wrote about jazz so you must write about it too.  at the time i felt out of sorts because i was writing about sid vicious and darby crash.  at the time i had no idea other poets were also writing about sid vicious and darby crash.  now i know better.  right.  well, well.  perhaps.  perhaps not.  here goes. . .