Five albums that changed your life

Can I have six?

Alice Cooper - Billion Dollar Babies
ELP - Brain Salad Surgery
Jean Michel Jarre - Oxygene
Pink Floyd - Piper At The Gates Of Dawn
Motorhead - Ace Of Spades
Metallica - Kill 'Em All

This is it (chronologically):

1. HIStory on Film, volume II by Michael Jackson (VHS, introduced me music and entertainment)
2. Bintang Lima by Dewa (introduced me local music)
3. Reanimation by Linkin Park (introduced me foreign music)
4. The Song Remains the Same by Led Zeppelin (LaserDisc, introduced me classic rock)
5. Echoes - The Best of Pink Floyd by Pink Floyd (introduced me prog music)

So:


First album I ever had. On a cassette. I got it from my cousin. He and his brother bought copies simultaneously and so he gave me the superfluous one. Boy, I was so happy!



First CD I ever bought after my friend introduced me to them.



The Ozzman Cometh - it was a real cometh! I was a member of a mail-order CD club and they always had an album of the month which they used to send you if you didn't pick anything yourself. This album was one of them and when I saw Ozzy's picture he looked weird to me (never heard of him before) and I thought why not? Well, the two first songs on the album which were Black Sabbath and War Pigs in garage versions I didn't like too much at first but when the third one, Goodbye To Romance, came in - I was sold! I was addicted to this album for a long time. And I still love that weirdo!



There was a time in Poland (in the 90s) that artistic creations were copyrighted for only 25 years since creation, so all albums from early 70s and before were not copyrighted at all! Thus, there were many magazines issued with such albums attached. That's how I bought the above album (among others) after my parents encouraged me to. This was my introduction to the world of jazz. Soon after I bought Kind of Blue.



And finally! I copied four albums of VdGG from my friend (apart from the above one also Pawn Hearts, Godbluff and Still Life) but H to He was (and still is) my favourite. And looking for some info on VdGG I stumbled upon Progarchives. The rest is history as they say.


Edited by Tuzvihar - July 21 2009 at 16:07

Edited by el dingo - July 23 2009 at 16:23

Dresden Dolls - The Dresden Dolls

Pink Floyd - Atom Heart Mother (This introduced me to Pink Floyd)
Iron Maiden - Piece  of Mind (The first metal album I have listened)
King Crimson - In the Court of the Crimson King (Introduced me to Yes, Camel and Frank Zappa)
The Doors - The Doors (Leaded me to psychedelic music and blues)
Led Zeppelin - IV (The first album I listened fully. Has a special place in my heart for introducing me to music)




Edited by Liimatta - July 25 2009 at 10:27

@ Tuzvihar:

Those are some entertaining stories . One can actually see the evolution in your listening-biography.

Thanks for a great post!

Yes -Close to The Edge

The first album I ever bought was Wishbone Ash - Argus. I was 14 and it changed my life. Up until then I had been listening to the pop charts so there was a lot of T Rex, Slade, Alice Cooper etc but nothing that really grabbed me. Argus fixed that. I asked a friend what I should buy next and he suggested Foxtrot and Close to the Edge. I bought them (1972 was a very good year) and again was blown away by how good they were. These first few purchases definitely influenced my record buying for the next 15 years.

Fast forward to 1987 and  I had returned home after a few years working abroad. I was speaking to a much younger colleague about my music taste and mentioned Genesis as being my favourite. He said I suppose you will like Marillion, but I had never heard of them. I went out and bought Real to Reel as it was the only live album they had at the time and I figured it would contain their "best of". Actually it didn't but it gave me a flavour and I bought evrything they had produced. It was like a breath of fresh air. I wish I had known about the other neo prog rock bands of the time - IQ, Pendragon Pallas etc. but it would be another 15 years for me to find them.

My final album is the Flower Kings Alive on Planet Earth. In early 2000, I found a copy of Classic Rock Magazine and was attracted by the cover story PROG Y2K? Inside was a three page article on Dream Theater, a two page article on Spocks Beard and a one page article on The Flower Kings. I was fascinated, but at the time the only album I could get (not on the Internet much then) in the shops was the aforementioned live album. It was another breath of fresh air and has led since then to the purchase of some 200 CDs containing some of my favourite music ever.