Music I loved in High School and College
10-28-2008
, 08:41 PM
The years in question: 1977-1981 for high school; 1981-1986 for college.
I wanted to go back and really look at the albums I loved and listened to AT THAT TIME - so this isn't a list of the best albums from that period of time. Instead, I re-listened to the music that was so important to me back then - some I still listen to, others I haven't listened to in over 20 years!
Remember, In the late 70s and early 80s, there was no internet. The only access to new music we had was from the radio and reading Rolling Stone. That's it. Hell, I was still buying 45 singles in high school!
So here's the first year - if this gets enough positive response, I'll continue. And feel free to post your favorites from your first year of high school, as well!
**********************
1977
In 1977, I was a Freshman at Don Bosco Prep, an all-boy, Catholic high school in Northern New Jersey. I was 14.
My bedroom was my kingdom, with my stereo system and wall of fame. Star Wars and sports posters dominated my wall. All through high school, I would rank my albums from top to bottom on a weekly basis. This was done via putting them all on the carpet and stacking them from worst to first. It was a deadly serious task, and every week whichever album was number 1 would cause great celebration and a playing from start to finish as I read over the liner notes and looked at the album photos over and over. (You youngsters are really missing having grown up on tiny CDs - no liner notes or great art work.)
In 1977, the Beatles had only broken up a few years ago. The Summer of Love was just 8 years in the past. Compare that to today, where we're now 17 years past the emergence of Nirvana! Disco and punk rock were huge forces in music, but had apparently swept by me mostly unnoticed.
These are the albums that dominated my turntable in 1977:
Fleetwood Mac - Rumors
Probably, the biggest album of the late 70s. If you grew up in this period you couldn't avoid it. Written and recorded while two couples within the group were going through break-ups. It's one I still listen to even though a few songs like Don't Stop and Oh, Daddy I seem to have heard enough of, but you can't deny three incredibly powerful classics:
Dreams - Stevie Nicks is an incredible songwriter, and the production of this song is just brilliant.
Go Your Own Way - One of the all-time great songs about breaking up - and still one of my favorite songs, ever. The pounding Mick Fleetwood drums and Buckingham's screaming solo is just perfect.
Gold Dust Woman - Great way to end the album, with the druggy lyrics and bizarre noises at the end.
Rumors holds up very well through the years, it's still a great album.
****
Meatloaf - Bat Out Of Hell
What a blast of an album! No one had heard anything like this when it came out. really, all the Jim Steinman songs are numbers that would work in a musical, but Producer Todd Rundgren turned them into bombastic rock songs of the finest order: Phil Spector wall of sound meets Bruce Springsteen attention to lyrical detail. Each song was a story, with sex, humor and violence - perfect fodder for a teenage boy.
Bat Out of Hell - The best motorcycle song ever!
You Took The Words Right Out Of My Mouth - "It must've been while you were kissing me." This album is full of word play like this.
Paradise By The Dashboard Light - If you've ever wanted to hear Yankee great Phil Rizzuto on a rock song - this is your chance!
I think if the songs weren't so damn funny, this album might have lost its appeal to me along the way...but I still manage to listen to it at least once a year, and I still have a blast doing so.
****
Steve Miller - Book of Dreams
This album was huge in '77, and I played it continuously. Truthfully, I hadn't listened to it in more than a decade, though. There's a few fun songs on it and if Jungle Love or Jet Airliner come on the radio, I don't turn the channel...but the rest of the album is forgettable.
Jungle Love - Fun, goofy and great for air guitar!
Jet Airliner - Can't think of a better "car radio" song.
Steve Miller seems to have made a career out of making disposable pop-rock. And even though it sold millions, Book of Dreams is no different.
****
Foghat - Live
Jesus, I forgot all about this one! I LOVED it back in the day. I don't think I got through the whole year without playing it at least once a day. To this day, I still have never seen Foghat live or ever bought a studio album of theirs. Great stadium rock.
Slowride - a lot of you will know this song from Guitar Hero!
Fool For The City - the actual clip from the album.
I Just Wanna Make love To You - The classic song given the rock treatment.
Foghat Live was a lot of fun to listen to again...it actually holds up pretty well - probably because there's only 7 songs on the whole damn thing! It flies by. Good, bluesy rock 'n' roll.
****
Heart - Little Queen
I've always been an old-school Heart fan, but have to admit to not listening to this one in quite a while. For a high school boy, two chicks that rocked out was hot as hell! And I remember really digging the acoustic, pastoral-sounding songs on it as well as the rockers.
Barracuda - Probably their most famous song. Ann Wilson has got a set of pipes on her, Man. Love her voice.
Kick it Out (click on "play" on recorder on right) - I've always liked this one.
Love Alive - Wow, these girls sure did love them some Led Zeppelin, didn't they?
Little Queen is still decent...mostly for Ann's voice and Nancy's guitar playing, as the sons are a tad....simple. Still good, though.
****
Other albums I listened to a lot in 1977:
Billy Joel - The Stranger
Steely Dan - Aja
Lynyrd Skynyrd - Street Survivors
Foreigner - Foreigner
Aerosmith - Draw The Line
Steve Martin - Let's Get Small
John Williams - Star Wars Soundtrack
Kansas Point of No Return
Abba - The Album
Bob Welch - French Kiss
and if you think any of that is bad, I also bought this:
Olivia Newton John - Making a Good Thing Better - I don't remember actually listening to this, but the album cover was always prominently displayed in my room for quite a while. Hubba hubba.
I wanted to go back and really look at the albums I loved and listened to AT THAT TIME - so this isn't a list of the best albums from that period of time. Instead, I re-listened to the music that was so important to me back then - some I still listen to, others I haven't listened to in over 20 years!
Remember, In the late 70s and early 80s, there was no internet. The only access to new music we had was from the radio and reading Rolling Stone. That's it. Hell, I was still buying 45 singles in high school!
So here's the first year - if this gets enough positive response, I'll continue. And feel free to post your favorites from your first year of high school, as well!
**********************
1977
In 1977, I was a Freshman at Don Bosco Prep, an all-boy, Catholic high school in Northern New Jersey. I was 14.
My bedroom was my kingdom, with my stereo system and wall of fame. Star Wars and sports posters dominated my wall. All through high school, I would rank my albums from top to bottom on a weekly basis. This was done via putting them all on the carpet and stacking them from worst to first. It was a deadly serious task, and every week whichever album was number 1 would cause great celebration and a playing from start to finish as I read over the liner notes and looked at the album photos over and over. (You youngsters are really missing having grown up on tiny CDs - no liner notes or great art work.)
In 1977, the Beatles had only broken up a few years ago. The Summer of Love was just 8 years in the past. Compare that to today, where we're now 17 years past the emergence of Nirvana! Disco and punk rock were huge forces in music, but had apparently swept by me mostly unnoticed.
These are the albums that dominated my turntable in 1977:
Fleetwood Mac - Rumors
Probably, the biggest album of the late 70s. If you grew up in this period you couldn't avoid it. Written and recorded while two couples within the group were going through break-ups. It's one I still listen to even though a few songs like Don't Stop and Oh, Daddy I seem to have heard enough of, but you can't deny three incredibly powerful classics:
Dreams - Stevie Nicks is an incredible songwriter, and the production of this song is just brilliant.
Go Your Own Way - One of the all-time great songs about breaking up - and still one of my favorite songs, ever. The pounding Mick Fleetwood drums and Buckingham's screaming solo is just perfect.
Gold Dust Woman - Great way to end the album, with the druggy lyrics and bizarre noises at the end.
Rumors holds up very well through the years, it's still a great album.
****
Meatloaf - Bat Out Of Hell
What a blast of an album! No one had heard anything like this when it came out. really, all the Jim Steinman songs are numbers that would work in a musical, but Producer Todd Rundgren turned them into bombastic rock songs of the finest order: Phil Spector wall of sound meets Bruce Springsteen attention to lyrical detail. Each song was a story, with sex, humor and violence - perfect fodder for a teenage boy.
Bat Out of Hell - The best motorcycle song ever!
You Took The Words Right Out Of My Mouth - "It must've been while you were kissing me." This album is full of word play like this.
Paradise By The Dashboard Light - If you've ever wanted to hear Yankee great Phil Rizzuto on a rock song - this is your chance!
I think if the songs weren't so damn funny, this album might have lost its appeal to me along the way...but I still manage to listen to it at least once a year, and I still have a blast doing so.
****
Steve Miller - Book of Dreams
This album was huge in '77, and I played it continuously. Truthfully, I hadn't listened to it in more than a decade, though. There's a few fun songs on it and if Jungle Love or Jet Airliner come on the radio, I don't turn the channel...but the rest of the album is forgettable.
Jungle Love - Fun, goofy and great for air guitar!
Jet Airliner - Can't think of a better "car radio" song.
Steve Miller seems to have made a career out of making disposable pop-rock. And even though it sold millions, Book of Dreams is no different.
****
Foghat - Live
Jesus, I forgot all about this one! I LOVED it back in the day. I don't think I got through the whole year without playing it at least once a day. To this day, I still have never seen Foghat live or ever bought a studio album of theirs. Great stadium rock.
Slowride - a lot of you will know this song from Guitar Hero!
Fool For The City - the actual clip from the album.
I Just Wanna Make love To You - The classic song given the rock treatment.
Foghat Live was a lot of fun to listen to again...it actually holds up pretty well - probably because there's only 7 songs on the whole damn thing! It flies by. Good, bluesy rock 'n' roll.
****
Heart - Little Queen
I've always been an old-school Heart fan, but have to admit to not listening to this one in quite a while. For a high school boy, two chicks that rocked out was hot as hell! And I remember really digging the acoustic, pastoral-sounding songs on it as well as the rockers.
Barracuda - Probably their most famous song. Ann Wilson has got a set of pipes on her, Man. Love her voice.
Kick it Out (click on "play" on recorder on right) - I've always liked this one.
Love Alive - Wow, these girls sure did love them some Led Zeppelin, didn't they?
Little Queen is still decent...mostly for Ann's voice and Nancy's guitar playing, as the sons are a tad....simple. Still good, though.
****
Other albums I listened to a lot in 1977:
Billy Joel - The Stranger
Steely Dan - Aja
Lynyrd Skynyrd - Street Survivors
Foreigner - Foreigner
Aerosmith - Draw The Line
Steve Martin - Let's Get Small
John Williams - Star Wars Soundtrack
Kansas Point of No Return
Abba - The Album
Bob Welch - French Kiss
and if you think any of that is bad, I also bought this:
Olivia Newton John - Making a Good Thing Better - I don't remember actually listening to this, but the album cover was always prominently displayed in my room for quite a while. Hubba hubba.
Last edited by Dominic; 10-28-2008 at 08:59 PM.
10-30-2008
, 12:01 AM
Nice post. Aja is good -- probably their most popular -- but like #3 or #4 on my personal list for Steely Dan. Rumours is amazing. "The Chain" rocks. Watch this clip if you want to see a really coked-out band.
Lol... looking at your list again, you'd probably fit right in at most colleges these days. Lots of staples.
P.S. Don Bosco sucks
. They're pretty good in sports though, for New Jersey.
Lol... looking at your list again, you'd probably fit right in at most colleges these days. Lots of staples.
P.S. Don Bosco sucks
. They're pretty good in sports though, for New Jersey.
10-30-2008
, 03:51 AM
A little before my time, but overall good music.
My high school years I enjoyed:
Tupac
Marc Anthony
Michael Jackson
Bone Thugs & Harmony
Too Short
Alot more stuff too, but meh. I listened to the music of the times too obviously 1999-2003. But I liked the stuff I really liked + techno and classical music.
Salsa, rock, pretty much everything except country music.
My high school years I enjoyed:
Tupac
Marc Anthony
Michael Jackson
Bone Thugs & Harmony
Too Short
Alot more stuff too, but meh. I listened to the music of the times too obviously 1999-2003. But I liked the stuff I really liked + techno and classical music.
Salsa, rock, pretty much everything except country music.
11-02-2008
, 02:19 AM
I'm in college right now, so in this post I'll focus on what I listened to in high school, which was from 2001 to 2006. I never really listened to any new music that was coming out at the time because, to be honest, it wasn't nearly as good as all the other stuff I was discovering.
GZA - Liquid Swords (1995)
I'm so thankful that my first encouters with hip hop weren't with the likes of Master P or Puff Daddy. I don't even remember how I stumbled upon this album, but I loved it instantly. GZA's lyrical complexity is mind-boggling on Liquid Swords. Add to that RZA's genius choices of samples and some of his finest production and you have one of the best albums ever put together - of any genre.
Nas - Illmatic (1994)
Illmatic is often praised as one of the greatest, if not the greatest hip hop album of all time for a reason. Nas brought rap lyrics to a whole new dimension, displaying an uncanny ability to play with words, over beats by the rap game's top producers: Pete Rock, DJ Premier, Large Professor, etc.
Wu-Tang Clan - Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) (1993)
This is one of the albums that you listen to and your mind just gets blown away, whether you like it or not. Through all the violence and braggadocio, there is great wisdom and knowledge captured on some of hip hop's most original beats. A classic for the ages.
Mobb Deep - The Infamous... (1995)
This is what gangster, thugged out hip hop is all about - not some played out bling-bling, money, cash, cars, bitches, bull****. This is raw viciousness. Some of the hardest beats ever put on wax: "Right Back At You", "Shook Ones Pt. II", "Survival of the Fittest", "The Start of Your Ending (41st Side)", etc.
Souls of Mischief - 93 'til Infinity (1993)
I purchased this album after falling in love with its title track and it turned out that the album was filled with other gems. This is one of the first albums to introduce me to alternative jazzy hip hop. The hook on "Live and Let Live" still blows my mind and I can't say enough of "93 'til Infinity".
Group Home - Livin' Proof (1995)
It is often said that Group Home's rappers weren't deserving of DJ Premier's production because they weren't as lyrically talented as most of Premo's usual collaborators. That's nonsense. They're pretty good. That talk is only because Premo's beats on here are some of the greatest ever produced - "Up Against the Wall (Getaway Car Mix)", "Supa Star" and "Livin' Proof" come to mind.
Binary Star - Masters of the Universe (2000)
My introduction to underground hip hop. This is when I started taking pride in knowing tons of artists casual hip hop fans didn't know, and started digging for the most obscure albums I could find. Binary Star's two rappers, One Be Lo and Senim Silla are both brilliant. "Reality Check" and "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" are among the many memorable tracks off this classic album.
Dr. Dre - 2001 (1999)
Seriously, who hasn't listened to, and enjoyed this album to at least some extent?
There are many more albums that shaped my high school years (Raekwon's Only Built 4 Cuban Linx... or ATCQ's Midnight Marauders, for instance), but these are the ones that had the greatest impact on me or that I listened to most often.
GZA - Liquid Swords (1995)
I'm so thankful that my first encouters with hip hop weren't with the likes of Master P or Puff Daddy. I don't even remember how I stumbled upon this album, but I loved it instantly. GZA's lyrical complexity is mind-boggling on Liquid Swords. Add to that RZA's genius choices of samples and some of his finest production and you have one of the best albums ever put together - of any genre.
Nas - Illmatic (1994)
Illmatic is often praised as one of the greatest, if not the greatest hip hop album of all time for a reason. Nas brought rap lyrics to a whole new dimension, displaying an uncanny ability to play with words, over beats by the rap game's top producers: Pete Rock, DJ Premier, Large Professor, etc.
Wu-Tang Clan - Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) (1993)
This is one of the albums that you listen to and your mind just gets blown away, whether you like it or not. Through all the violence and braggadocio, there is great wisdom and knowledge captured on some of hip hop's most original beats. A classic for the ages.
Mobb Deep - The Infamous... (1995)
This is what gangster, thugged out hip hop is all about - not some played out bling-bling, money, cash, cars, bitches, bull****. This is raw viciousness. Some of the hardest beats ever put on wax: "Right Back At You", "Shook Ones Pt. II", "Survival of the Fittest", "The Start of Your Ending (41st Side)", etc.
Souls of Mischief - 93 'til Infinity (1993)
I purchased this album after falling in love with its title track and it turned out that the album was filled with other gems. This is one of the first albums to introduce me to alternative jazzy hip hop. The hook on "Live and Let Live" still blows my mind and I can't say enough of "93 'til Infinity".
Group Home - Livin' Proof (1995)
It is often said that Group Home's rappers weren't deserving of DJ Premier's production because they weren't as lyrically talented as most of Premo's usual collaborators. That's nonsense. They're pretty good. That talk is only because Premo's beats on here are some of the greatest ever produced - "Up Against the Wall (Getaway Car Mix)", "Supa Star" and "Livin' Proof" come to mind.
Binary Star - Masters of the Universe (2000)
My introduction to underground hip hop. This is when I started taking pride in knowing tons of artists casual hip hop fans didn't know, and started digging for the most obscure albums I could find. Binary Star's two rappers, One Be Lo and Senim Silla are both brilliant. "Reality Check" and "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" are among the many memorable tracks off this classic album.
Dr. Dre - 2001 (1999)
Seriously, who hasn't listened to, and enjoyed this album to at least some extent?
There are many more albums that shaped my high school years (Raekwon's Only Built 4 Cuban Linx... or ATCQ's Midnight Marauders, for instance), but these are the ones that had the greatest impact on me or that I listened to most often.
Last edited by Black Milk; 11-02-2008 at 02:26 AM.
