Headphones through Time

 My intention with this blog is to post a review of all the albums I own in alphabetical order. Nothing more or less. I own a lot of albums, though, so I expect that I will never complete this. 

My first encounter with music was as a child of course. I had a little 45 that had "I've Been Workin' on the Railroad" on it. I vaguely remember, and my mother  filled in some of the gaps of my memory, that I would play this 45 over and over again. I also owned a copy of "Dueling Banjos", from that Burt Reynolds movie where Ned Beatty gets ass raped by rednecks in the woods. I didn't see the movie until I was well into my forties but it was a great movie -- as most movies in the 70s were. (What happened to our culture?)

Later on, I pretended to hate music, mainly because in some James Blish retellings of Star Trek episodes that I read in second grade, James T. Kirk was said to have "no ear for music". I wanted to be Captain Kirk, ergo, I, too, "had no ear for music." 

When I was 15 I got a tiny little radio with these dinky little trebly headphones. I remember listening to Top 40 music on the local radio station (Rock 99) and just being entranced, falling asleep every night to the sounds of 1986. 

When I had money, which was rare, I started buying music. At first, my tastes were pretty tame: A-ha, Genesis, and George Michael and Wham! Nobody really liked Wham! in my vicienity except for girls, but I loved the melodies and Michael's voice.  On my 17th birthday, I got 17 dollars and travelled across town by bus to go to the mall to buy a new album. I chose The Cure's Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me. I remember reading the lyric sheet while riding the bus back, exciting -- there was an f-bomb right in the lyrics of the first song. I felt so punk rock! Which is funny because, I am actually one of the least punkish characters on the outside anybody could imagine: at 15, I was a boyish looking pudgy kid, with no athletic ability, no finesse with anything, and really the most interesting thing about me was I was probably one of the most arrogant people the world had ever known up to that point. Having nothing much to look forward to or enjoy in my day-to-day life, I compensated by trying to convince myself I was somehow better than everyone else. But I digress...

Soon afterwards, I began buying music whenever I could, or, if truth be told, more often than not I shoplifted it. I had no money. I reckon I stole about 70 cassettes from the local Wal Mart over the next three or four months, including most of The Cure and Prince's catalogue. Eventually, though, I was caught, and though I was let go (three cheers for white privilege, I guess) I didn't steal any music ever again, though I did have some bouts with shoplifting in my early adulthood, it was mainly cigarrettes and food.

Later that year (1988), when I was exceedingly bored and visiting my mother, I started listening to The Beatles 20  Greatest Hits, which I listened too out of pure desperation because I had nothing else to listen to...I had no intention of liking this old shit, but as I listened, I noticed that the songs, as they progressed, became steadily more...interesting. They started exceedingly stupid ("Love Me Do") but by "Help!" they sounded not far off from The Cure or George Michael's mopier lyrics. I soon became hypnotized. By the summer, I got a job and a car and spent basically all my money on music: The Beatles, The Clash were my next phases, The Smiths, Elvis Costello, and other New Wave acts...

After school, if I wasn't working, I would walk or drive to the local library and pore over copies of The Village Voice and the New York Times and Rolling Stone magazine, reading record reviews. i even delved into the microfiche files of the New York times to read ancient reviews of albums -- I was surprised to see reviews for live shows by Suzanne Vega as early as 1979 (she was still a kid!) I imainged living in the Big City and being part of this whole scene of music and art. Of course, I was living in an oppressive boring town in the middle of nowhere, so I just wanted out. I was basically a character in a Bruce Springsteen song. 

By the time I was set to go to college, I had, oh, probably 150 cassettes...I sold them all in hopes of having enough money for books for school, and the next four years, frankly, my purchases slowed to a trickle. It didn't help that my peers (who I loved then and love even more now) were really into classic rock and so my fledgeling hipsterism was pretty much nipped in the bud. I've been trying to catch up to what's current and new ever since: thus far, I've made it to about 1998. (haha)

But my love for music never went away. it's always accompanied me, and a day that I don't get through three or four albums is a rare one indeed. I reckon that I have over 600 albums purchased  or repurchased(and probably another 25 or so titles that I had in the past but no longer have.)

So my intent with this blog is to go through them, one by one. At first I was going to go through them in chronological order, which is a fun way to go through a bunch of albums,  thus the (rahter lame) title of the blog. But then I realized that the earliest record I own is Elvis Presley by Elvis Presley. A fine album, but I'm not really into writing about it at the moment. So I'm planning to go through it alphabetically, by title, which will more show the breadth of my listening habits...not that wide, really, I'm not super eclectic. Oh, how I'd like to be! How I'd like to play you my Sun Ra and my African congo rhythm after  my Edith Piaf and before my obscure Italian indie pop band. But no...I'm afraid I'm pretty much a normal 51 year old guy with a love for sixties music, punk rock and alternative rock: i.e., a typical white guy. I do have a bit more leanings towards the pop side of things than most men: I'm struggle against "rockist" attitudes and try to keep an open mind, as anybody reading this blog will eventually find out...

Currently the "earliest"album in my collection (alphabetically) is A.M. by Wilco and the last one is 99.9 F' by Suzanne Vega. (Using albums named after numbers as coming after albums that start with Z.

 I'm more excited by the Suzanne Vega album than I am by the Wilco album, but I'm going to stick  to my plan of reviewing the first one. I won't be able to update this daily, and some reviews will probably be shorter than others, but hopefully I can occupy myself with this blog until I'm ready to move on to whatever else tickles my fancy. If you're reading it, I hope you enjoy it too.

Oh, and expect typos. Loads of them. I'm not planning on getting rich off this blog.