Entertainment For Lively Minds
The last time you heard a life changing album…
Some while back David Hepworth wrote a piece on The Wire. In the article he mused that the series really meant something in a way that albums used to but no longer could. Not only did this comment push me towards watching the best programme ever made but it also consolidated my existing belief that discovering life-changing albums was a thing of the past…
I remember first hearing “Hunky Dory”, “Revolver”, “The Stone Roses”, “Five Leaves Left” and even “Architecture and Morality” (the latter being the first album I ever bought not that I need an excuse). At the time, hearing these albums felt like a whole new world had opened up.
The last time this really happened was about ten years ago when a friend played me Joni Mitchell’s Hissing of Summer Lawns while I was on holiday (I’ve harped on about this album already on the recent Song For Sharon thread so I wont bore you again)
There are a number of possible reasons why I no longer come across life-changing albums: it could be an age thing (more important things to worry about), the fact that I’ve discovered most of the life-changing albums already (in most cases I was discovering back-catalogue), a post i-tunes thing, or a genuine lack of decent new albums..
I’m interested to hear the massive’s nominations but also any theories on why the life-changing album is or isn’t as easy to find as it used to be…
- More from walker182.
- Login or register to post comments
-
Age
Surely as you get older, your life is harder to change in any significant way? Especially with music. Once you've heard more than, say, 500 albums, and listened to the radio, you are unlikely to hear anything staggeringly new particularly often. You've caught up with history and await whatever lies in the future. New musical movements tend to be youth-oriented so you might not 'get it' anyhow.
I don't see this as a bad thing, being familiar with a lot of music is like a comfy chair, a cup of tea and a pair of slippers.
Also, what counts as 'life changing' from music anyway? I'm a musician and seeing Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings play live changed my life because it changed the direction of the music I was personally involved with, probably for the rest of my life. In terms of records, the last one to change my life in any way was the first Darkness record! That reminded me that music doesn't have to be serious and that entertainment was important (after a decade of listening to Radiohead et. al.).
Age can be a factor
...in the sense that we are likely encounter more new experiences in our younger years and music often forms a soundtrack to this. That is not to say that in later years we can’t make radical changes to our life and to the music which accompanies it. Having recently shunned them for being too “packaged” I recently sat down and enjoyed the Buena Vista Social club album and dreamed of burning all my pop records, leaving my job and going to live on an island…
it is because the latter three events are unlikely to happen soon that Buena Vista is not my new life-changing album, but I like the idea that it could be..
Not a life changing album
But some ear-bud headphones that have improved quality of life. Seriously. Took a while to burn them in but I just cannot believe how good they are.
Re-listening to those life-changing albums of yore has been, well, a revelation.
A bit pricey and mail-order only:
http://www.headphone.com/headphones/yuin-pk1.php
Sorry if I sound like an advert, I am not affiliated with Yuin, headphone.com nor any hi-fi specialists, in any way.
"What's the difference between this and my gramophone?"
"About thirty years and a plastic cover to you chief."
...technically...
...that's an advert but then I suppose I should point out that I am in no way associated with Joni Mitchell or her record company (but please do buy Hissing of Summer lawns)
But are you then perchance ...
.. a representative of the sprinkler industry?
Should we stop recommending things we like?
I thought that was one of the many reasons many of us came here. Gee, it's not as if I signed up five minutes ago for the sake of spamming headphones.
It doesn´t happen very often these days
But in very late 2008 I heard Fleet Foxes and Bon Iver the very same week and I was almost blinded by the beauty. It was snowing outside my window on both occasions.
I´m only 32 but it gets harder to really lose it when I hear something new. Aged 13 every second album was the! best! album! ever! I actually bought Revolver aged 12 so I was right at least once.
Bon Iver
Your on the money with Bon Iver. Nothing has sounded as fresh and melodic since Grace by Jeff Buckley.
Paul Du Noyer: good joke
Paul Du Noyer made a good joke in, I think, The Word a few years ago.
He said if an album changed his life he'd take it back to the shop and complain.
"Shop". Blimey, that dates it.
Last album that changed my life...
Jings, that's a tall order.
When I was 17/18 it felt like I heard something at least every month that knocked me for six. It was never contemporary stuff, always the classics. So my answer to the question of why it never feels like this any more is probably because there's only a finite amount of the good stuff. For example, I'm never going to hear the White Album again for the first time, more's the pity.
But the last album that changed my life?
Okay, here's two...
- the last contemporary (ie: new release) album that truly changed my life would have been DJ Shadow's Endtroducing in 1996. Everybody know this one? After listening to this I didn't play guitar for about 8 years, and started collecting funk vinyl.
- the last old/reissued album that truly changed my life was probably when I finally got around to listening to the Incredible String Band after hearing their name being dropped for years. The 5000 Layers album: First Girl I Loved, Hedgehog Song, etc. I picked up a guitar again after about 8 years, and my funk vinyl started gathering dust.
Sadly...
...age does appear to wither these sensibilities, but I'm convinced it's NOT about having heard it all before. I suspect we just become less receptive to those indefinable qualities that make music "gob-smacking" to us. Life just seems to get in the way, somehow.
It may happen less often these days, but when it does, it's just as powerful and those albums that always did it for me, still do it for me with the power they always had.
..another point is...
...I tend to listen stuff on an ipod rather than a hi-fi, so things just don't sound as good..
What does life-changing mean?
Do you mean "I'm giving up my job and moving to Santiago" life-changing, or just "I'll never feel the same way again"?
I still hear records that leave me breathless and make me re-assess almost everything I'd previously thought about music, and thus they change *me*, if not drastically shifting the course of my life... the forthcoming Flying Lotus album being a great example.
Sometimes it can take ages for a record to have that effect. I'm sure I'd heard 'Kind Of Blue' a dozen times before, but it wasn't until I got a CD of it, went for a run on a sunny day and saw a flurry of green parakeets fly by at a crucial moment that its magic really hit home.