30 Albums: Abandoned Luncheonette (The Album that made me realize that my parent’s music can be cool)

I can honestly say that I never really considered my parent’s music to be “cool” or really good for that matter (Granted, this was before I really knew what music was and what was good. A lot of kids go through this phase and it’s pretty bad at times. You might miss some stuff early on and then kick yourself later). Granted, they do listen to some awesome stuff and are willing give anything I throw at them a listen, as long as it isn’t hip-hop (although both my parents have admitted that they think that Macklemore is pretty entertaining). However, I never really thought that I would call any of their music cool. Granted they listen to stuff like Bruce Springsteen, Steely Dan, and various other artists that I they consider to be cool and took me a while to admit it too, but if you asked me that question years ago, I would never consider anything that the listened to really be cool. That was until I listened to this album.

Now let’s hope into a time machine for a minute and get a better understanding of what’s going on here. It’s the early 70s, Freddie Mercury is still alive and just starting to make waves with his music, New York City is just starting to change music from sounding the same to having unique sound all its own, and two guys who were attending college in Philly, who met when the show that ended up when gun fire erupted and they escaped in the same service elevator, are just putting out their second album. The duo, who would later call themselves Hall and Oates, are just called Daryl Hall and John Oates, haven’t found the success that they will find in the 1980s (for some odd reason, the fact that were willing to plug the Pontiac Fiero, the most 80s car besides the Trans Am, is pretty much as 1980s as you can get without doing an insane amount of coke or crack), for some odd reason they had started to build this fan base.

While I didn’t entirely think that album would be one of the albums that my parents had in their collection that I would eventually consider to be cool (it would take a soundtrack with I will be discussing later to convince me that Hall and Oates are pretty damn awesome), after a while I just realized that this album was really one of the few albums that I could say that it’s one of the few albums in their collections that I wouldn’t mind borrowing for a while, mainly because they would never miss it.

I really don’t know what it is about this album that attracted me to this album in the first place. I’m not really a big fan of soul music (Sharon Jones and the Dapkings are the group that I really enjoy in this genre), but there’s just something about it. I guess that the fact that my father makes reference to the title track whenever he sees someone washing dishes when we’re at family gathering, peaked my interest (apparently he had a roommate at one point who believed he made up the lyrics ‘He was the dishwasher, busy in the back/his hands covered with gravy’ for years) or the fact that most of the songs tell stories, but whatever it is, I’m still trying to figure out why I decided that it was the first album that my parents had was cool.

Maybe it’s the song She’s Gone, which is one of the most notable songs on the album, which was written when both Hall and Oates where going through ending relationships (Oates would later say in a 1985 interview with Rolling Stone that the song was about Hall’s divorce from his first wife) and also is said by both artist that it might be the best song that they’ve written together. The song might just be the ultimate breakup song that forces you to realize that she’s walked out the door and no matter how much you try to convince everyone that she will be back, there’s no way in hell that she’s coming back. It’s just one of those songs that takes a few listens to figure out what’s going on. The lyrics weave an interesting web, telling you that once she’s gone, she’s gone for good.

Although my favorite song on the album has to be Las Vegas Turnaround (Sara’s Song), which is about Sara Allen, who is Hall’s song writing partner, who would eventually become his longtime partner (they were together for roughly 28 years before they broke up in 2001 due to undisclosed reasons). I guess that to this day, if you are a musician and you really want to impress a girl that you are madly in love with, you write a song about her. Hall would do it twice, first with this song and then later with the song Sara Smile, which would become their biggest hit.

I guess that you could say that while at first I thought that my parents didn’t have anything that I would ever thing was cool, as it turns out, I was totally wrong. While I do like most of the stuff that they listened to growing up, I really don’t consider any of it to be cool. However, after listening to this album, I think that I will decide more carefully which albums that my parents have are cooler than I originally thought.

Short list #1: The Five Albums that didn’t make the cut.

I the process of making this list, I had a lot of albums to choose from. Over the years, you tend lose track of what albums you liked and what influence they had over you. Last week when I was driving home from running errands, I realized that I left off five albums that were big in shaping my musical influence and really needed to be added to a list in some way or the other. This is the reason why I have decided to make this list of five albums that didn’t make it, mainly because of the fact that they deserve to be mentioned too.

Just like the real list, there will be no real order to it, just the order that I posted them in,

1) Turn The Radio Off – Reel Big Fish: Honestly and truthfully, while in 1996, I was only 10 when this album came out and also in the only in the fifth grade, I was kind of glad that I waited four years to really get familiar and have somewhat of a firm grasp of what music was.

This album was one of my many gateways to ska and while I think I want to be somewhat embarrassed, I realize that I shouldn’t be. Ska is pretty cool, considering that it’s now officially an underground genre again. While it went mainstream for a while there, ska never really big and didn’t get any radio play and there for never really became cool amongst the people who might have given it a chance.

Song like Sellout, taught me that going mainstream, while it means more money, isn’t cool to sellout and leave your true fans behind. Beer, taught me now that I’m older, that even if anything gets bad, you can always have a beer and everything will be better. Hell, I also learned that songs like She Has a Girlfriend Now isn’t meant to be serious and that music can sometimes be funny. This album will always be one that I go back to from time to time, mainly if I want to relive my high school days.

2) Losing Streak – Less Than Jake: Punk Ska at its finest. I guess that you could say that like the previous, it was one of my gateway albums to the world of non-mainstream music. It also helped that in my middle school days with my short attention span, that almost all of the songs on this album where just about two minutes long. Songs like Johnny Quest Thinks that We’re Sellouts (Which I would realize later that it was rerecorded from an older album), album opener Automatic, and Just Like Frank, were long enough for me satisfy my attention span.

3) Hello Rockview- Less Than Jake: A different take on the same band. While there aren’t really short songs like on the last album, this one is much improved over Losing Streak. Songs like All My Friends are Metalheads really reminds me high school for some odd reason. At this point in your life, you could make a choice, you could either keep going to church and be like your parents or you could leave and hang out with your friends more. The intro is also pretty damn awesome too. History of a Boring Town also makes me think of my home town and how I still find it to be boring (although at the end of last year, things really got interesting and the town didn’t seem boring then). Hell, Scott Farcas Take it on the Chin, isn’t half bad either considering it based off of A Christmas Story, which at one point was my favorite holiday movie.

4) Borders and Boundaries – Less Than Jake: I guess that you could say that I was a huge Less than Jake fan at one point, mainly because of the fact that I have picked three albums that fit into this somehow. His album had a lot of songs that defined my most of the first half of high school. Songs like Look What Happened, Gainesville Rock City, and the rest of the songs, made me want to take a road trip and take pictures at each border of each state both ways. However the stand out track for me has to be Mr. Chevy Celebrity and the fact that it’s the first song that I realized that it was telling a story and that almost all of songs told some kind of story. But this one, that there was a deep meaning to the lyrics than just telling a story. I always wanted to write a short story based off this song, but never got around to doing so… yet.

5) The Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater Soundtrack – When this game came back, the world had seen anything like it. Granted Skate and Destroy and Town & Country Surf Designs: Wood & Water Rage both had skateboarding, but nothing like this. For years skateboarding had tried to break into the mainstream and become a legit sport. Thanks to this game, I was introduced punk and alternative full force and really fell in love with it. Stuff like Police Truck, Jerry Was A Race Car Driver, and Superman really opened my 13 year old mind to what my taste in music might just be. I guess that you also could say that this is where my obsession with soundtracks began too.

The 30 Albums Project: Introduction/Liner Notes

With my 30^th birthday a year away, two things started racing through my mind. The first is what movies have become my favorite and how some of them still hold up over time and the second thing is one thing that I think about on a regular basis and that thing is what albums have had an influence over the past 30 years. Granted, most people will think about songs when this idea comes to mind, but when the average listens to roughly 100,000 songs in a life time (I personally think it’s more, but all of the things that I’ve read over the past few weeks points to roughly the same number over and over), but for someone like me who has a collection so large that he doesn’t hear the same again for at least six months, I started to think about albums and what influence they’ve had over the past 16 years or so (I’m going to start with the years 2001, mainly because of this was the year that I started high school and also the year that I started to listen to music that I really liked and also paid attention to the musical trends that were out there) and what albums had an influence on me. However, that was going to be the hard part.

While for some, this might be an easy task, but for someone like me, it was one of the hardest things that I’ve had to do in a long time. With over 6,000 songs on my iPod and almost 400 complete albums, it gets kind of hard to pick out what albums had a major influence on me. However, somehow I managed to narrow it down to 30 (Which was a feat in itself).

The albums themselves range from the 1970s (Which is mostly what I call my “Parents music”) to today. While I tried to not have any repeats from the same artist, somehow I managed to fail in that department. I managed to give two artists two different albums on the list. The answer to this I don’t have because of the fact that it’s the same reason why I have three different soundtracks from three different movies on my list also (I will not tell what they are until the each one comes up on the list).

Each album has a unique reason why it has made me into who I am. Some might have convinced me that I should have been born in a different time period or that a certain period is pretty awesome, some might have been a gateway into certain music styles, or even taught me that that going past a certain CD of a certain artist might not be the best idea. While what you just read might seem confusing, but after I start posting the actual posts and the in between items (Which will be short lists of pointless stuff or lists that are somewhat serious and fun), it will all make sense in the end.

The first post will be up on the 13^th of January, which will kick off the yearlong project.