20 Most Influential Albums in the Life of The Kid

Think of 20 albums, CDs, LPs (if you're over 30) that had such a profound effect on you they changed your life. Dug into your soul. Music that brought you to life when you heard it. Royally affected you, literally socked you in the gut, is what I mean. Then when you finish, tag 20 others, including me. Make sure you copy and paste this part so they know the drill. Get the idea now? Good.

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So I'm a little wary of doing this for a couple of reasons, but I'm going to go ahead and do it anyway... and I'm going to do my best not to just add my favorite cool-sounding albums, because that sort of thing makes me want to vomit.

I'm going to try this in chronological/biographical

order, until I reach the end, or the timeline collapses in a haze... years aren't necessarily the album's release, but represent the year (to the best of my ability to estimate) that they altered my world...

01 Louis Armstrong - Hello, Dolly! (1980-)

This is still one of my favorite albums ever, and one of my strongest memories from childhood... listening to this LP downstairs in the playroom with dad sometimes sitting, sometimes dancing around and clapping. He didn't need to say anything. I learned to love music from my dad in that room, on that record player, with that album.

02 Chicago - The Heart of Chicago, 1967-1997 (1980's-today, in general)

Over the course of growing up in the 1980's, riding around in the back seat of my parents' cars, listening to WISH 99.5, Chicago's music worked its way quietly into my brain stem and lay there dormant until sometime in the early Oughts, when their music took over my consciousness again without explanation or warning. This time, I hung on every horn hit, every brilliant modulation, every excellent turn of a phrase. These guys were men among boys, even in the musician-rich 70's music scene.

03 Arrested Development - 3 Years, 5 Months, and 2 Days In the Life Of... (1992)

When I started choosing my own music in the early 90's (ca. 4th and 5th grade), I chose (with the help of my neighbor Dylan) hip hop: The East Coast Family--Boyz II Men, Another Bad Creation, Bel Biv Devoe; Public Enemy; A Tribe Called Quest; Run D.M.C.; Kid N Play... I loved all of it, and still do, but for me, it was all just fun until Arrested Development came along. A middle class suburban white kid in NH all of a sudden was hearing this infectious, passionate message about social justice (Public Enemy went over my head because of their tone, if we're being honest.), and I didn't know what to do with it yet. But I loved it. It's one of the very first cassettes I ever bought for myself. The message and the music hold up today. Long live Arrested Development.

04 Toad the Wet Sprocket - Fear (1994)

To my memory, this is the first CD I ever bought with my own money, and it also holds the distinction of being the first album on which I ever loved every song enough to not skip anything while I listened. Top to bottom, almost every time. I loved Glen Phillips' writing then, and I love it more now.

05 Squirrel Nut Zippers - Hot! (1996)

This band ends up at the top of my list of favorite bands always. They blended the traditional jazz sensibilities I grew up with, with southern gothic lyric writing, an alternative musical twinge, and an unbelievable stage presence. They may have been the 2nd concert I ever went to, after Van Halen. I saw them in the gymnasium at St. Anselm College with G Love and the Special Sauce and either B.B. King or Bo Diddley. No joke. It's best to forget, by the way, that they ever ventured into that neo-swing thing (album: Bedlam Ballroom)... terrible idea. Fortunately, the rest is gold.

06 Original Broadway Cast - Rent (1996)

Part of me wants to groan, too, but no. I love musical theater, and this soundtrack was off the chains. The intentional parallel to La Boheme, the melodies, the unbelievable lyrics, the individual and ensemble performances... I sound as though I'm apologizing, but I'm not. It was that popular for a good reason. Also, this album is inextricably tied to memories of my tightest group of friends through high school: Jeff, Katie, Brendan, Jeremy, Billy, Teeny, Lauren, Scott, Margo, Chris, and others. 1996-1999 were great years in southern New Hampshire. This is the album that brings me there.

07 The Brown Derbies - Nightcap (1997/8)

My first collegiate a cappella album was "Hot Tin Roof" from the Yale Alley Cats, and a year or so later, I got this one. From there on, nothing was ever the same for me. Those who know me well know that I've spent no small percentage of the last 10 years singing a cappella in various forms, and while the blame is manifold, this was the most world-altering and inspirational album for me in that regard. This album was pretty incredible for the time it came out, and it's still in my top 3 or so a cappella albums, despite being dated.

08 James Taylor - Greatest Hits (1999)

My mom and sister gave this album to me the day I received my acceptance letter to UNC-Chapel Hill, and for weeks, "Carolina In My Mind" was on repeat, laying the foundation for a strange affection for that state that endures in me to this day. I ended up not taking the scholarship offer there, but I brought the album with me to UNH in the fall. It's difficult to explain exactly why James Taylor resonates the way he does in New England, but his music conjures nothing but vivid images of Boston, Cape Cod, and the people I love in both. Now that's a great album.

09 Guster - Lost and Gone Forever (1999)

I was only at UNH for 2 years, but I'm almost certain I saw Guster there 3 times. They were one of the seminal college bands of the late 90's, and though there are so many great songs across a handful of albums, THIS album... oh man... this album, produced by Steve Lillywhite, was just a magical album in my life at that time. I will never be able to think of anything but UNH when I hear "Lost and Gone Forever," and that's okay. When Guster was in town, it was always a good time.

10 Hyannis Sound - On the Beach (2000)

(it's interesting that this album falls on the 10/11 cusp, as this album/group represents a very literal turning point in my life)

This album was a great white whale of sorts for me. I ordered it because a friend from music camp 4 years prior was singing in the group... and I quickly became fixated on the arranging, the singing, the song choices... everything about it. There was a time when I could have told you each person's part to every song on the whole disc. I auditioned for the Sound in 2000 and while I didn't make it, I was given encouraging feedback. It took everything I had to muster the courage to risk rejection a second time in 2001... and that, to quote Frost, has made all the difference.

11 Martin Sexton - Black Sheep (2001)
12 Great Big Sea - Turn (2001)
13 Jyde - Lyve (2001)

One of the best parts of joining Hyannis Sound was coming into contact with so many (so. many.) incredible people who were intrinsic artists, not intentional ones. Even the guys who weren't in ostensibly artistic career tracks had an unmistakable artist streak in them. And they loved really good music, and introduced me to it. Martin Sexton was the biggest one, for me, of the lot. Anything I could say about him, I either already have, or someone somewhere has, so suffice it to say, this artist and album were transformational for me. Great Big Sea introduced to me the folk music and maritime culture of eastern Canada and the north Atlantic in general, a love affair I haven't been able to shake. Jyde was an a cappella ubergroup that lived/played on St. John, USVI, in 1998-99, and was a creative incubator for one of a cappella's most talented and unique arrangers, Samrat Chakrabarti--after all of these years, still the most artistic person I know.

14 Kurt Elling - Flirting With Twilight (2002)

The most talented singer with whom I've ever sung is Nate Altimari, one of the earliest members of the Hyannis Sound (also of Jyde). I say this unselfconsciously, recognizing full well that I sang with some stinking brilliant singers at Berklee. It doesn't matter. Nate wins. So when in 2002, he handed me Kurt Elling's "Flirting With Twilight," I knew it would be special... I just didn't know how special. In my opinion, Elling is the greatest jazz singer of the last decade, and possibly well beyond that. No disrespect meant to Mark Murphy, Jon Hendricks, and Al Jarreau, to whom Elling openly pays homage. I count them as an earlier generation, not a lesser one.

Casual jazz listeners will enjoy him enough, students will listen in wonder, and some people will miss the boat entirely. It's no matter... more tickets available for me.

15 Miles Davis - Kind of Blue (2004)

I don't really enjoy liking things I'm supposed to like, and it takes a special kind of stubbornness to pick up a trumpet when you're 9 and not pick up "Kind of Blue" until you're 23... but I'm a special kind of stubborn. Anyway, this time I was wrong, okay? I can't think of anyone who shouldn't hear this album. I'll let the volumes that musicologists and historians have written on this masterpiece be my testimony by proxy.

16 Jason Upton - Great River Road (2005)

Backstory: at some point while I was at Berklee, I wrote an email to Gotee Records asking a few questions for a project for my Record Companies class (so I guess summer 05?). I got an email back from Joey Elwood, the label's president, and not only was he incredibly gracious with his time, but he sent me a 30-cd brick of Gotee artists. Among them was Jason Upton, who I put on the shelf until months later, when I was going through some stuff and he came up on my iTunes playlist.

This is without a doubt the most worshipful album I've ever listened to. It won't hit everyone the same way, but I'm truly blown away by Jason Upton. Close runners-up to the "most worshipful album" title are Rich Mullins with (anything, really, but) "Songs" and an album that's about to be mentioned in a minute here.

17 David Crowder Band - A Collision (Or 3+4=7) (2006)
18 Derek Webb - Mockingbird (2006)

I heard both of these albums for the first time when I was interning at EMICMG in the fall of 2006. Crowder shocked me from a musical standpoint, Webb from a content standpoint. Crowder hasn't shocked me since, but I felt that this was one of those rare top-to-bottom albums that one had to be a fool to break apart. Just listen all the way through. You can feel your spirit swell at points.

I had just read "Blue Like Jazz" that summer, and the ideas it presented about God were still competing with the political and religious dogma I had constructed in my mind to protect me from other thoughts. Then came "Mockingbird," and this stripped down, no frills, entirely acoustic album made shards of glass out of what I heretofore assumed were concrete pillars upholding my world view.

19 New World Son - Salvation Station (EP) (2007)

This is that other album that I include in the "most worshipful" category, and I know it doesn't seem to fit. But I heard this EP when I was stuffing mailers in the EMICMG mailroom as a temporary employee sometime in mid-late 2007. This album is magical. This band is magical. It's delta blues meets Blood, Sweat, and Tears meets black gospel church holding services in your local dive bar. This album has soul for weeks. And the guys are just stand-up guys, too. Really. I'm so excited about this album.

20 Michael Gungor Band - Ancient Skies (2007)

This was supposed to be a worship album. It is, I think, but really, it's art rock for the church. I had the pleasure of transcribing every bloody note on this masterful album for the upcoming songbook, and I'm telling you, from a harmony geek's perspective, this is some surprising stuff. This is not I-IV-V worship: there's mixolydian in there (not shocking, but rare in this idiom), there are fully diminished 7 chords, there's modal interchange, and there are some theologically rich lyrics set to beautiful melodies against lush harmonies... and oh yeah, there's that whole bluegrass/shred metal/guitarmony thing, too. Buy this album. I don't know where everyone's been on this album, but buy it.

And He's Off

Okay, it's time to start really blogging here. There are so many things that God's been showing me and doing through me and people around me, and it's high time I started documenting them.

I thought I'd start by posting 2 blogs I've written in the last 16 months or so, to give some context: where I'm coming from, where I'm hoping to go.

The next step will be, starting soon, to chronicle some of my (hopefully interesting) thoughts here about faith, community, the human condition, and whatever else strikes my fancy.

Thanks for dropping in!

[03.14.07] How Great Is Our God

I know that in my last pseudo-post, I alluded to an incredible change in my relationship with God, and I think it was unfair to leave it at that, but I really needed to step back and reflect on the real scope of the work He's doing in and around me... and to the extent that I'm even capable of comprehending it, I think I'm ready to give it a shot. So here goes... this is gonna take a while.

The Setup

My adjustment to living in Nashville, away from the friends, family, and places I love, was not easy. I had a tendency to pretend that everything was incredible--never better, in fact! But inwardly, I was wasting away. I still held on to a grudge against my old pastor, and I spent the fall going to church, but unable to worship, which has always been where I met with God most powerfully and most intimately. He made me with music, and for a season, I needed to meet Him in other places. I had a couple good friends at the time who watched my struggle in that regard, and I'm so thankful for them. But as with all things of this nature, I see in retrospect that I was at least 50% of the struggle, if not a great deal more. I wasn't ready to be healed, I wanted to wallow (though I didn't admit it), and I wanted to have someone to blame when things went wrong (as I believed they would). This is the real-life equivalent of "place your head between your knees and prepare for impact."

Concurrently, I had this incredible internship. I also had this insatiable ambition. The latter prevented me, I realize now, from being as good for them as I could have. I took a lot for granted, and I imagined myself every day to be in competition with some nameless, faceless other uber-intern who was my primary competition for the job of my dreams. I don't know why, I don't know where it came from, but that's what was going on in my head. Anything less than a killer job at the end would have been a massive, embarrassing failure. So you can see I was on track for a meltdown... and it came. The internship ended, no job was offered (duh), and I went home for Christmas feeling like a complete failure at life... and I wasn't really ready to deal with God, either.

Looking back now, I realize what a great deal I had during my internship, how sweet everyone was (well, I realized that at the time, but I also thought they were keeping score constantly. (Un)Holy self-centeredness!), how much I learned, and what a rare and enviable opportunity I had, being a small and temporary part of such an incredible company.

Meanwhile, back in the 'Ville...

So I returned to Nashville with no job, a lease I couldn't afford, and no prospects to speak of. I sent about 60 resumes to various companies in a handful of cities, trying to convince myself that I'd misheard God, and that my real purpose was waiting for me in DC or Chicago or London, or back in Boston (how could I have missed it?)... 60 or so resumes and nothing. No call, no email, no anything. This wasn't the story I was expecting. The Berklee spring break group would be here soon, and I was going to be unemployed? Oh man... please no.

It was at this point that I had an experience similar to the night in Feb 2004 that I fell on my knees and begged God to be real, or the short, rough period last year, after I'd spent all of my energy pouring out and needed to be poured into. I finally realized that all of my efforts were worthless, because I was trying to find something for MY sake. I wanted a job to preserve MY image. I wanted the house in Franklin because it made everything look as though life was great... it was a cover for what really was going on, and what was really going on was that I had let my pride get in the way of God's sovereignty. And I was headed for a pretty damaging crash-down if I didn't surrender control to Him.

Somewhere in that time, a switch flipped, and I found myself hungry for Him again... all I wanted to do was know Him again, to feel as though I wasn't alone in the wilderness, to trust His promise that He had a plan to prosper me and not to harm me. I started seeking Him, rather than seeking some rock star job that looked great to everyone back home. All I wanted was to conform my will to His, and to go where He wanted me and stand in the gap that He had carved out for me. All I needed was to hear Him... oh crap. Hear Him? How was I gonna do that?

Then, just as quickly, things started to turn. I found a new house up in E. Nashville (the 'hood) that I could afford, with 3 other Christian guys, I joined my church choir, and I took a job delivering pizzas and started temping in the mail room at EMI. And between the pizzas and the temping and the hunger for God, all of a sudden, things looked pretty great.

I won't get too into the choir thing, or a whole lot of the peripheral stuff that requires even more backstory, in the interest of getting to where we are now...

It's for you. It's God.

Then one day when I wasn't at EMI and wasn't delivering pizza, and wasn't actually stressing about not having some sexy industry job, the phone rang. On the other end was a voice I didn't recognize, belonging to a guy I'd never met, representing a company I'd never heard of. After about 30 minutes of talking, I had an interview set up, and 4 days to research every shred of text I could find on the guy and his company. Long story slightly less long, I got the job, and I'm now the Marketing Director for Gyroscope Arts, Inc., which is relocating to Nashville sometime in the next month, but we're not really sure when. Ha.

Over the last couple nights, I've had a great time talking with a girl who's going to be coming down from Illinois with Gyroscope. She's never lived anywhere but Illinois, where all her friends and family are, and according to her, this move totally goes against her normal MO. But she's taking a step out of the boat and trusting God, because she really believes that He's telling her to go. And this is so exciting to me... I'm so excited for her, and so glad to see that despite her reservations, she's being obedient to God and trusting that He's leading her to the gap He's carved out for her. This is going to be so cool.

That's all for now. Thanks for reading, and sorry for rambling. :)

"Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God." (Phil 4:6)

[10.09.06] Power Play

Lord Acton, the 19th- and 20th-century British historian, is frequently misquoted as having said, "Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely." What he actually said was less cynical: "Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely." It's a subtle difference: in exploring his perception of the inverse relationship of one's sense of morality to the degree of power that he attains, Acton left for himself the possibility of one in power beating the odds and remaining--generally, relatively, whatever--uncorrupted. (Imagine that--an idealistic British intellectual.)

It is an interesting testament to our age, I think, that he is so frequently and carelessly misquoted. (And not because it is a revelation of our lack of diligence in research... at least not now. That's a different post.)

My question is this: What is it that makes a man (generically and gender-neutrally speaking) choose the pursuit of power over respect? Why do people confuse these two? Why does a vulgar power play appeal to us more than the respect that comes from strong, thoughtful, and humble righteousness?

The reason this is on my mind is because of a current and very personal struggle that I was discussing last night with a friend. Here's the basic idea: I was an active member of a church for a while during my infancy as a Christian. A few months ago, the pastor of that church made a power play so large and blatant that it finally revealed not only the deception in his spiritual vision and his dealings with the church, but the spiritual and emotional abuse he inflicted on me and others like me.

For months now, I've been hoping that God would heal me from this betrayal. My faith has suffered. I've suffered. I still haven't truly worshipped since it happened. This man took my joy and my comfort, and I'm scared that I'll never have it back, if I'm being honest. And so back to the question at hand: What makes ANY man, much less a shepherd over Christ's flock, choose his own exaltation over the well-being of others? Why isn't it enough to be loved? Why isn't it enough to faithfully do the work we've been given? Why must we dominate?

The legacy of the Fall carried with it the chains of insecurity. From that moment, from the moment God's affirmation of our worth and perfection ceased to be sufficient for us, we were doomed to spend the time until Jesus returns painfully aware of the way we compare to other people. Now, God knows that these differences aren't differences in value. The way we value certain characteristics--wealth, appearance, charisma--is entirely foreign to Heaven. But since the Fall, apart from God, we have been running around creating these fabricated hierarchies to validate ourselves.

If you listen carefully, you can hear the gnashing of teeth.

We see this dichotomy between power and respect play out in history: Napoleon, Khan, Alexander. Gandhi, MLKJr., Mother Teresa. One group sought power ostensibly for power's sake; the other understood the power of ideas and action, and had no use for whatever power might have tried to attach itself to them. We remember one group for its conquests of land and civilizations; we remember the other group for its conquests of the mind and heart. We remember the latter because we feel they stood humbly for something universal, and never exalted themselves above that something. We like to imagine we could do the same.

We intellectually grasp one group's power. We grasp the other's in our heart.

So which is ultimately more attractive, and thus, more powerful: Ideas or Force? Love or Power? I regret to report that history is still playing out this question--apparently the answer isn't as clear as we'd like to think it is.

One quick illustration, then I'll close.

I remember watching Fox News in the lead-up to the Iraq War. I remember hearing analysts talking about the planned first phase of the assault, and calling it "Shock and Awe." The idea was simple, as explained to us by myriad right-wing pundits: "What you don't understand about Islam is that what these people REALLY respect is power. Force. The guy with the biggest gun." And so Shock and Awe was meant, I think, to demonstrate to everyone who thought this way that indeed the US had the biggest guns, and thus were more powerful than whoever they were currently following. Okay, mission: accomplished. So what?

I'm not a phenomenally intelligent person, despite what my friends may think. That said, I think that among the things I didn't understand at the time, and what many of these right-wing pundits don't understand (to be clear, those on the left aren't off the hook, either. We've all got work to do.) is the nature of the heart of man. The crazy and cruel thing about the Fall is that God left our hearts intact. We want the same things we've always wanted: love, respect, fellowship, belonging. But there's some sort of distortion filter thrown on each of us in the absence of God, and we find ourselves competing with instead of celebrating and loving each other.

I don't believe that what these "experts" said is true. I believe that regardless of which God you serve (including worldly gods, like materialism and esteem), the heart of every man desires and respects the same aforementioned things. And it's an awfully cruel trick the devil plays on us that causes us to break off into cliques and sects, red and blue, white and black, us and them. He may be winning the day, but he won't win the eternal struggle, that's assured. I take a measure of comfort in that. I hope you do, too.

As a post-script, I believe that when God heals me, I'll be able to bring myself to pray for my old pastor. I regret to say that I'm not a big enough man to do it right now, but I look forward to the day I am. I do pray for the hearts of the people who used to attend that church with me, and sometimes I even pray for my own. But I'm hopeful for all of us, including my deceived former pastor. I hope that he comes to find joy in serving the Lord diligently and humbly, and never again has the opportunity to choose power over respect. May we all be so lucky.