Ten Albums that Have Influenced my Taste in Music

I have been tasked to choose ten albums that have influenced my taste in music. One album a day for 10 consecutive days. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.

Honorable Mention

Note: Growing up, Tom McElmeel was my best friend. His older brother Mike had an awesome record collection. I used to ride my moped out to Tom's house and I would listen to KISS' Alive II, especially "God of Thunder" because that is when Peter Criss played the most mesmerizing drum solo I had ever heard.

Day 10

Note: There are SO many more albums that I could have selected for this final spot, but I ultimately went with Riot's "Thundersteel" tune. This is a live version of the cassette that Scott Golden brought to my house in summer 1989. I remember being flabbergasted by the guitars and the double bass drums and then the vocals! It was a gateway band to many other bands in the same genre - I've never forgotten the way it made me feel on that day. The video below is from a 2018 concert. You remember concerts, right? Sigh....

Day 9

Note: Great ska band - love the playful lyrics.

Day 8

Note: Motley Crue introduced me to the Beatles, thanks to "Shout at the Devil" as crazy as that sounds. In 1984, my parents took my brother & I on a vacation from Iowa to CA. We were in northern CA, when the four of us went into a KMart and emerged with a cassette tape for each of us to play on our Ford Econoline's cassette tape player. Dad got Billy Joel's "An Innocent Man," Mom got ... I think Olivia Newton-John's Greatest Hits, and I don't remember what my brother got. Me? Motley Crue's "Shout at the Devil" and, believe it or not, that album made it into the rotation as we traveled south, first to San Francisco, then to Hollywood, then east to Las Vegas and then CO for a whitewater raft trip down a river. In the liner notes for my cassette tape, it revealed that the tune "Helter Skelter" was written by someone named "Lennon/McCartney" and I had no idea who that was until I got back home and found out, though in those pre-Internet days, I don't remember exactly how...
Anyways, the song that introduced me to the Beatles!

Day 7

Note: My grandma was my biggest supporter of my love for music and I always think about how poetically awesome it is that she bought my first album. We went to the Collins Road KMart in 1980 and I came home with it ... and Mom was NOT happy! Back in the day, a cassette tape was ~$13. She had told Grandma that I could get a 45 record, which was under $5, not a $13 cassette tape. Anyways, this album was popular and, to this day, I have never watched the movie.
This tune is still one of my favorite love songs.

Day 6

Note: Before Bayside, there was Count the Stars. Never get tired of hearing this album, even after all these years, at least once a week. I couldn't pick a single tune - I never skip any of these tunes.

Day 5

Note: Bayside captured my mind when I first heard this tune. I never get tired of hearing "Devotion & Desire" or, for that matter, any of their tunes, except "Mary" on Vacancy, even after all these years.

Day 4

Note: I wish I had tracked how many hours I spent air drumming to this album. I was proud of myself when I could nail the intricate parts in this tune.

Day 3

Note: In 1997, I was writing music reviews for http://www.dailyvault.com and was starting to receive many promo CDs in the mail. This promo CD for a band actually came in a big Federal Express soft envelope with ~20 other CDs. Somehow, this CD slid under my couch and was probably stuck there for a couple of days before I found it. Bigwig instantly became one of my favorite punk bands because of how raw, under-produced, and short the songs were - the entire album is barely 30 minutes! This is their cover of the theme from "Cheers" to give you a taste of their style.

Day 2

Note: Over the years, I have grown to truly appreciate the way Liberty DeVito contributed to BJ's tunes - I spent a lot of time trying to figure out the drum intro.

Day 1

Note: As an impressionable 2nd grader, this tune and "Living in Sin" made me want to play drums. Somehow, my family had this album on 8-track tape.

Mixture Posture

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