March 2, 2012

Greg's Top Ten Albums/Songs That Have Influenced My Life (6-10 Today, 1-5 Yesterday):

6. “No Excuses” by Alice in Chains - This song might be my high school theme song if I had to pick one. Whenever I play this track from “Jar of Flies” on my iPod it immediately takes me back to my high school days. There was something in this song that just made me feel normal at an adolescent time when so many of us were searching for an identity. Plus, who else in any metal category can harmonize like Layne Staley and Jerry Cantrell used to? It’s almost like God created them specifically to play in a band together.

7. Album “Cloud Nine” by George Harrison - My mother listened to George Harrison’s solo record “Cloud Nine” quite a bit in 1987. Now, keep in mind, I had only heard of The Beatles at this point in my young life, so I had no idea who the individual members were or what their impact on the world was. This record was my very first taste of anything Beatles related and it still gets heavy rotation on my iPod today. I used to borrow the cassette tape from my mother and play it on my mini-walkman everywhere I went. For some odd reason, whenever I play Legend of Zelda on my old NES I can hear this album playing in the back of my mind. Yes, I even played it while I was playing Nintendo as a kid! One of my favorite memories was as a ten year-old impressing an adult staff member of my grade school’s day care center with my George Harrison knowledge.

8. “Wish You Were Here” by Pink Floyd - This is a shout out more to the song than the whole album the song is featured on. I used to go to a small coffee shop named Cafe Quinn in Cupertino with my high school friends back in the mid-90s. They had a guitar player there who would play acoustic and take requests. I think by the end of my senior year he was sick to death of playing this song for me. It was my introduction to Pink Floyd. Before you knew it I was buying all their records, going to laser shows at DeAnza College and considering dropping acid. Ok, that last part was embellished, but the rest is true. I was quite the Pink Floyd addict during my latter years of high school and this song has to be the catalyst for it all. It’s also one of the most heartfelt songs I’ve ever heard in my life and certainly one of the most influential

9. Album “License to Ill” by The Beastie Boys - I used to listen to rap music more than any other type of music when I was a pre-teen and this record from the genre was the first I ever purchased. My cousin listened to them and got me started on them sometime in the mid to late 80s when they were starting to get a lot of exposure on MTV. This was before their follow-up record “Paul’s Boutique” dropped a few years later, so they were really in their infancy as a band. By the time I was eleven I had completely memorized the lyrics to “Paul Revere” and “She’s Crafty” even though I hadn’t a friggin’ clue what each song was really about. When you’re eleven years-old and you’re singing songs about tramps stealing everything from their one night stand’s bedroom it’s time to call a therapist.

10. “Down in the Park” by Gary Numan - An odd choice to be sure. Most of you know Numan as the guy who sang the 80s song “Cars” which is commonly played in commercials and covered by countless bands over the years. When I briefly went to UC Riverside in 1997 I was going through arguably the roughest period of my life and dark music really spoke to me around this time of my life. I remember going with some people from my dorm to the Riverside Theaters just off campus to watch a double feature of Pink Floyd’s “The Wall” along with some old alt-rock documentary called “Urgh: A Music War” which featured a lot of alternative bands from the early 80s. Numan was one of the featured artists and his haunting rendition of the synth-heavy “Down in the Park” was among the songs played during the show. I was immediately drawn in by the song and accompanying video. His songs were inspired by the works of sci-fi writer Phillip K. Dick who just so happened to be the writer for “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep” which is the inspiration for the movie “Blade Runner” - a movie I re-discovered around this time and completely fell in love with.