Howdy gang 

I recently saw a blog by some dude at Yahoo listing the “albums that changed (his) life,” which were not to be confused with his favorite albums of all time, so here are a few albums that came along at a certain point in my life that had a huge impact on me.

“Kiss Alive,” Kiss
When I got into it: 1977. When I was in 6th grade I got this album for Christmas (coincidentally, I got my first guitar the same day). I blared the song “Hotter than Hell” all day long (sacrilege, looking back on it) because it had the word “hell” in it and that was a no-no in the Orf house. Ace Frehley was my first guitar hero.

“Rumors,” Fleetwood Mac
When I got into it: (1977). I started listening to KDKB (in the ’70s, one of the best album rock stations in the country) in 6th grade (wow, big year for my musical development I guess) and started hearing a bunch of great rock music (my folks listened to country, which I loved too – I was rebelling, I guess, by cranking the rock). Hearing “Go Your Own Way” on the radio from ”Rumours” made me realize that it wasn’t all Kiss out there…

“Never Mind The Bollocks,” Sex Pistols
When I got into it: 1978. I was 11 years old when I saw Johnny Rotten sneering on the cover of Creem magazine in the local grocery story. He scared the crap outta me, so of course I had to come to grips with the fear and I bought “Nevermind the Bollocks” at Musicland at Metrocenter in Phoenix. This record, gloriously sloppy, rife with cuss words and a vocalist who didn’t care about hitting the right notes, made me believe I could be a rock star too.

“Led Zeppelin IV,” Led Zeppelin
When I got into it: 1978. I had a buddy with an older brother who was big into Zeppelin, and he let me borrow this 8-track (yeah, an 8-track!). I knew “Stairway to Heaven” was on it, but what floored me was “Going to California,” which I’d heard but didn’t know was Led Zep. I liked the hard rock (see above: Kiss) back then, but Zeppelin made it cool to love beautiful acoustic music too.

“Made in the Shade,” The Rolling Stones
When I got into it: 1980. On the last day of school of 8th grade, with a long summer facing me before I started high school, my mom took me to Smitty’s grocery store on Cave Creek and Hatcher in Sunnyslope. They had records there (imagine that now, contemporary albums in a grocery store aisle…) and they had a bunch of disco stuff, but they had this greatest hits Stones disc, which covered the early ’70s. “Wild Horses,” “Brown Sugar,” “Angie,” “Tumbling Dice” — some of the greatest rock ever made. I decided I wanted to be Keith Richards (minus the drugs and the roostertail haircut).

“Pet Sounds,” The Beach Boys
When I got into it: 1982. I had a crush on this girl in 6th grade, got over it by 7th grade, and then in 8th grade she and her family moved right across the  street from me! Crush renewed immediately. I thought it was fate that we’d be together. Now, I am an inherently shy person to this day, and back in high school I was even worse – I didn’t speak to girls unless spoken to, and that almost never happened. It was killer on my social life, of which I basically had none. This girl and I said “hey” to each other across the street on occasion, but she always had an older boyfriend. I had heard the raves about this “Pet Sounds” album and I got it in the summer between sophomore and junior year. It’s thematically about the trevails of growing up, falling in love, etc., rendered in The Beach Boys beautiful harmonies. The album has a melancholy feel, and I had ”Wouldn’t It Be Nice” in my head when this girl would return home across the street in the passenger side of her boyfriend’s car. Killer. We graduated, she moved and fate is way overrated. This album is the fabric of my “woulda, coulda, shoulda” failure living across the street from my crush and never doing a damn thing about it.

That’s all for now…

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