I was challenged to name 10 albums that I love. I did it all wrong. I chose 11 and wrote a lot of personal stuff and trivia about why I love them.
Here they are:
1. The Beatles: Magical Mystery Tour
I was 8 or 9. It was the first record anyone ever borrowed me. On vinyl. Not because I was a hipster but we hadn’t CDs yet. I‘m that old.
I can’t say that I really liked it back then. I found it quite strange and somewhat disturbing. The cover was (and still is) atrocious. By purpose, I know. The songs were weird and beautiful and made me question what I knew about music. And I still get the chills when I hear „The Fool on the Hill“ today.
2. Beethoven: Symphonies 1-9
I was 9 when I got my first CD-player. Those little shiny discs from the future where expensive and I only had a few. My biggest treasures were „Saxophon in Gold“ by Max Greger (still very effective if you’re having a romantic evening with your love interest) and the complete symphonies by our favorite angry looking composer buddy with hearing problems.
I don’t want to look pretentious here, but I listened to good ol‘ Ludwig almost every day. Especially No 6 was my go to symphony after a hard day at primary school. My mother told me recently that I had discussions with my dentist as a kid which one of the big 9 was my favorite and why.
Did I already mention that I was a weird kid?
3. Ben Harper: The will to live
I was 17 and MTV was still playing music. I sat in front of my 54cm screen when I saw this bored looking guy sit in a car singing „Faded“. I had made the leap from classical to pop-rock music in high school with bands like Aerosmith and Lenny Kravitz. I still love „Get a Grip“. Sorry not sorry. But in my heart I knew that I was not made for this. I couldn’t see myself doing this kind of high-powered testosterone filled music.
Ben Harper was a guy I could rely to. He seemed to be doing what he wanted to do. In a very effective, inspiring and willingly unspectacular way. This was a game changer for me. I bought a guitar and a 4-track and wrote my first songs within weeks.
4. Blue Room: Demos
I was 18 and I had just put out my first home-made album. By put out I mean, I sold them to my friends at school.
CDs seemed very late 80ies at that time, so my big brother decided that we all needed to make the next big step into the future. Mini-Discs were super hot and in order to get a better price at the shop, he convinced some friends (and me) to invest in this new technology.
Every night I would lie in my bed and listen to Mini-Discs that we dealt with in school. One day, somebody gave me a demo of this band Blue Room, where a guy I knew from bus sang and played the guitar. His name was Jim Brimeyer and when I heard his songs that evening as I was lying in my bed, I realized that I had to be a part of this.
This guy was a genius. He knew nothing about writing notes or playing a saxophone but there he was, inventing music that was real and deep and full of energy. A few days later, I told him that I was in if he would let me and we sat in his crappy blue Honda Civic listening to music and making plans about how to change the world.
5. Joseph Arthur: Come to where I come from
I was 20. So much had changed since I had joined Blue Room. I was in a real studio and we were making a real record. This creative work of some people sitting in a room, trying to find the essence of a song and put it on tape (yes, it was on tape) still drives me today.
It was MTV again that made me discover Joseph Arthur. I had to order the CD and wait for weeks to get it as this kind of alternative stuff wasn’t really easy to find in Luxembourg. But back then and still today, you could count on the Plakkebuttik beim Palais to come by with your poison, no matter how extravagant it was.
This record is strange and beautiful. Maybe a little overproduced here and there but in a wonderful and creative way.
It’s sad. And angry. And full of hope.
6. Matthew Good Band: Beautiful Midnight
I was 21 and I was frustrated. Things were not going the way I imagined with my band. After releasing our debut, we had played a lot shows and people started to ask for a follow-up album. Well, it was a lot more expensive than nowadays to run to a studio, so we decided to invest in building a studio of our own. We bought some microphones and a mixing desk and learned on the go.
We ended up with a few songs. Some sounded like crap and some sounded ok. But it was nothing we would put out. Mich, our drummer, and I were most of the time abroad studying at different universities and it was getting harder to feel like a real band. Things had changed and everything seemed complicated and heavy.
Our bassist Jean-Claude (a.k.a. Birkel, I never call him by his first name) came by one day in his weird looking little Ford Ka and we drove around listening to his newest discovery, this Canadian guy Matthew Good and his band.
Boy, that was an angry record. Hard to find a sunray in this one. It was released in late 99 and you could literally hear the paranoia and the angst of this new millennium looming around the corner.
It really hit a nerve with me as I was going to this phase of transition and I still remember driving trough the night with no real destination listening to „Suburbia“.
7. Pinback: Blue Screen Life
I was 22 and I had met this girl. Like in the movies, she had found me when I had just decided to never love again. But there she was. Things were going fast and after some time living alone in Strasbourg, she decided to study some more and we practically moved in together.
We would spend hours and hours running from one record or book store to another. I would just look at the covers, choose those that would speak to me, and listen to the record behind it. Like that I discovered songwriters like Kathryn Williams or Ben Kweller.
One day, I saw the cover of an album that resonated with me. I put the headphones on and was immediately sucked into a universe that was unlike anything else, so unique and intimate. The song structures were unusual and there were no real melodies in a classical sense. The songs were built on motives, repeated and altered, comparable to minimal music. But in a very accessible way and full of poetry.
I learned so much from this album and there is not a day passing by without a Pinback song popping up in my head. And it goes without saying that naming your band after a character in a 1970ies Sci-fi flick by John Carpenter is pretty badass.