Personally Influential Music Thread

Hey guys.  I'm a big believer in the power of music and it's influence on people's lives.  So, thought I'd start a thread where we can each post music that has been personally influential to us.  To our life, worldview, philosophy, etc.  

I think it will be helpful to our various forum discussions as well, because I think you can learn a lot about someone by knowing what their music is.  Where they are coming from, what they are about, their world/life-view, etc.  And that serves to facilitate more productive discussion and understanding all the way around.

May I suggest we not post more than two videos per post ... and let someone else post before you post again.  Don't spam the thread, so to speak.  And not bagging on other folk's music either... people should listen to what "speaks" to them personally, I've always said.   Feel free to post parts of lyrics you find particularly meaningful to you as well.

So I'll  kick the thread off with just one tune that has long reinforced some of my feelings about my life personally whenever I hear it.  Enjoy! .... (or not .. I don't care    I came of age in the 70's, what of it? )

Yay, Diamondhead! Love all that NWOBHM stuff.

My main influences are metal and punk rock, although I'm eclectic as hell... there's everything in my CD collection from Johnny Cash to Howlin' Wolf to Chuck Berry to Link Wray to even some Donovan (I don't go around telling everybody that 'un, but, forums are pretty anonymous.) It's still at least 90% the harder stuff, though. Old-school punk (Vibrators, Sex Pistols), hardcore (Bad Brains, Agnostic Front), old-school metal (Judas Priest, Budgie), thrash (Slayer, Razor, older Metallica, Whiplash, Blessed Death), death metal (Obituary, Morbid Angel), black metal (Darkthrone, Mayhem), grunge (Tad, L7, Nirvana), classic rock (Lynyrd Skynyrd, Rush, Foghat, Cheap Trick)... you name it, I could list bands all day. And lots of obscure stuff. Lately I'm big into Brazilian bands -- Nervosa, Torture Squad, Korzus, Vocifera. And, o' course, old-school Sepultura. Just found a Nervosa-inspired all-girl-thrash-band from Indonesia on YouTube I'm liking so far... Annabelle.

Main influence, though? That's easy: Motorhead. Motorhead are the perfect band. It's the sound I always wanted to hear as a kid, so when I found it actually existed, it was magic. My best-of-Motorhead compilation would have to be at least three hours long, and "Ace of Spades" doesn't even have to be on it.

It's the closest sound to what being-in-my-head-all-day is like. Whether that's good or bad, I dunno.



I once wrote a big long "Top 10 Albums That Changed Your Life" thing. I won't bore ya'll with the whole story behind each album, but, here's a list. They're not necessarily your favorite albums or even things you still like, just things that in some way developed you at stages of your growth. The list is in order of when I got into each thing:

1. The Beatles Second Album
2. Kiss - Love Gun
3. Alice Cooper - Killer
4. Black Sabbath - Mob Rules
5. Motorhead - Iron Fist
6. Ramones - Road To Ruin
7. Metallica - Kill 'Em All
8. Minor Threat - Discography
9. Nirvana - Bleach
10 A. Darkthrone - Blaze in the Northern Sky
10 B. Ice T - O.G. Original Gangsta

I had to cheat and make the list go to 11 (it's one louder!) because I couldn't decide if my black metal phase or my rap music phase was more important. I still like everything on the list other than the Beatles 2nd album... which I don't dislike, I still like the Beatles (who doesn't?), I just don't have any real affinity to it anymore. But when I was three or four years old I listened to it incessantly.

I'm late to this guy... but he's a new favorite.

zsomething wrote:
I once wrote a big long "Top 10 Albums That Changed Your Life" thing.  I won't bore ya'll with the whole story behind each album, but, here's a list.  They're not necessarily your favorite albums or even things you still like, just things that in some way developed you at stages of your growth.  The list is in order of when I got into each thing:

1. The Beatles Second Album
2. Kiss - Love Gun
3. Alice Cooper - Killer
4. Black Sabbath - Mob Rules
5. Motorhead - Iron Fist
6. Ramones - Road To Ruin
7. Metallica - Kill 'Em All
8. Minor Threat - Discography
9. Nirvana - Bleach
10 A. Darkthrone - Blaze in the Northern Sky
10 B. Ice T - O.G. Original Gangsta

I like that list but for 10A (more my daughter's kind of thing, it's okay I guess) .... and 10B ... nah, I don't get into that at all. Just doesn't "speak" to me. Oh, and #8 ... I don't know them?
 

PkrBum wrote: .. Neil Young - Old Man & Heart of Gold

I can get into some Neil Young .. actually I used to be able to play both of those songs, I wonder if I still can without looking up the chords?   I don't pick up my geetar too much anymore though ... for some reason?  I was never all that good anyway .. just a little below average.  I can play some stuff though and it sounds okay.   I'm looking at it right now, in fact ... standing over there in the corner with some dust on it, all lonely and sad.  

I'm really liking this thread, btw.  It's fun, informative ... and I just might come across some stuff that "speaks" to me I'd never heard of before.  There's a whole big world of music out there .. you can't know it all.

Telstar wrote:  (Puff the Magic Dragon]

Ah .. that brings back memories ... used to play that one for my daughter and her friends when she was small.  Wonder if I still can?  I can play some other PPM stuff too Cali Dreamin, Jet Plane, Hammer .... .. I was kind of a folkie for a time when in my very early teens ...even had a coupla pair of brown corduroy pants and a leather vest    I musta looked a bit ridiculous ... my Mom's influence, I guess?).  Me and John Denver were kinda tight for a while in the 70's    (till I got to be more of a "rocker" .. discovered Skynyrd, the Allman Bros, AC/DC, Doobie Brothers, etc )

EmeraldGhost wrote:

I like that list but for 10A (more my daughter's kind of thing, it's okay I guess) .... and 10B ... nah, I don't get into that at all.  Just doesn't "speak" to me.  Oh, and #8 ... I don't know them?
 

Yeah, rap can be an acquired taste. I love the old stuff (Ice Cube, Ice T, Public Enemy, Cypress Hill (who I like even though I don't smoke pot and that's 80% of what they rap about - go figure), etc.) but the newer stuff doesn't do much for me.

Minor Threat is a hardcore punk band who originated the "straight edge" movement. That's basically about not drinking or doing any drugs. I was always a non-drinker, non-drug-user, and surrounded by classmates who were drunks/druggies. So one night I was watching the old Night Flight show on the USA Network (back in the 80's, when they were good) and they showed Another State of Mind, a documentary on a couple of punk bands traveling around the country in a bus. (Here's a link if anybody wants to watch it on YouTube) Minor Threat was one of the bands they visited, and I discovered that this thing I'd been doing all along actually had a name. It was kind of revelatory, showing me there was a much bigger world outside of Mississippi, and not everybody was like my classmates. They're a great band... the singer, Ian MacKaye, said the concept is basically "I'm going to say exactly what's on my mind, and I'm going to do it in around 38 seconds."



He later went on to form Fugazi, which is a little better known.

Now, here's two bands that have impressed me in the past couple years. Both are very retro and sound like they were pulled out of the 70's:



Blood Ceremony is like a cross between Jethro Tull, Coven, and... I dunno, Blue Oyster Cult maybe? I'm usually not a big flute fan but it fits in perfectly here. Turns a lot of old influences into something really original.



Orchid... well, I can't say Orchid is original at all, but they sound like what Black Sabbath probably would've been doing if they'd carried on the same path right after the Sabotage album. So, even though it's a total Sabbath rip-off, who cares, it's like more Sabbath! And they're good at it, so, it's a good thing.

Telstar wrote: "Take Me Kangaroo Down" song[/youtube]

That song it personally influential to you, 'Tellie' ?

Well, ooooookay, then!  Doesn't have to speak to me, I s'pose.  Who am I to judge?  

EmeraldGhost wrote:

Telstar wrote: "Take Me Kangaroo Down" song[/youtube]

That song it personally influential to you, 'Tellie' ?

Well, ooooookay, then!  Doesn't have to speak to me, I s'pose.  Who am I to judge?  

Exactly.

What I listened to on the way to work:

Not "personally influential" for me ... but just got back with my daughter and her beau this evening from Independence Brewery in Austin to hear this band they like.  



Small venue ... outdoors, less than 50 people and they only played one set. Never been too much into metal myself, but it was nice to share my daughter's music.  We heard some other band play a set right before them also.

I told her at one point they sounded a lot like what my roommate in the barracks at Fort Polk in 1979/80 used to listen to.