5 Albums That Shaped Me

There’s this eerily compelling (for those of you who like to list) meme/application flying round on Facebook at the moment that enables you to pick your ‘5 whatevers’ and, whilst I usually shy away from the Apps side of Facebook, it’s drawn me in and I’m constantly having an internal debate with myself to select my ‘5 whatevers’.  I’m also really enjoying the random things my friends who I know well have selected (and yes, my friends on Facebook are actually flesh and blood friends – not for me the 150+ acquaintances that the youth of today seem to accumulate).  What’s been frustrating is the absence of the story behind the selection – I want to know why they’ve chosen the five.  With that in mind, I thought I’d share my 5s with you over the next week, story and all.

So, first out, the 5 Albums that Shaped Me.  A toughie.  Too many not too few but also so many genius albums that just didn’t make the cut because, brilliant though they are, I wouldn’t say they ’shaped’ me in a particular way.  They aren’t epoch-defining for me.

1. This is the Sea by The Waterboys

Before I became a ‘responsible’ parent (i.e. before going to a gig became a tour-de-force of organisational skill), I used to be a ‘girl who gigs’.  We’re close

enough to London to go in for the evening for anything that’s going and when money was less of an object, we used to take every advantage of that.  I love live music and anyone that knows me well would testify to the fact that my musical leanings are notoriously eclectic so I’ve had the opportunity to spend a great few years seeing all of my must-see bands live.   This love of live music, whilst it was likely to surface at some stage, really hit me at age 13 when I went to see Simple Minds live at Milton Keynes Bowl.  It was my first live gig and, much as I’d explained to my mother that I would quite obviously die if I didn’t get tickets to go, we really were too hard up for her to spring for what was then, a fortune in concert ticket capital.  I was not one to be daunted by circumstance, however, even at 13 and I decided to put my skills to work and earn my tickets (OK, so I filled in a crossword and sent it off and won them, but I have word skills not car cleaning skills, so sue me!).  The concert was great and the experience was life-defining but what really stood out was the band that came on second on a festival-style day line up and only played a 45 minute set.  That was when I found The Waterboys and realised that a really good band can sell themselves to you on a genius live performance.  I stalked this album after that concert.  It was back in the day of vinyl and cassette tapes and I used to hang around the local record store just looking at the dust-jacket (I only had a tape player so I couldn’t justify buying the LP but I did convince the record store to give me their display copy to mount on my wall).  I actually had to rebuy the cassette because I wore it out.  So, for my introduction to live music, this has the first spot.

2. The Joshua Tree by U2

If The Waterboys introduced me to live music, U2 cemented my addiction.  I had the good fortune to see U2 play Wembley Stadium (the old one, with the lions and the character not the rather anodyne modern edifice that replaced it) in 1987 on this tour and this album never left my cassette player that summer.  In a testament to my devotion to the important things in life, I refused to compromise and revise that weekend even though my O-levels started on Monday morning and I sat the whole lot of them with my Joshua Tree Tour T-shirt firmly affixed to my back – I was 15 and it was a statement (15 year olds are very good at statements!).  I’m pleased to say that I have lost neither my addiction to T-shirts nor my ability to work out what’s really important in life over the ensuing decades – I don’t even remember what the exam was that I sat that Monday but I don’t think I’ll ever forget Bono belting out classics on the Wembley stage.  My one lasting image of that concert, however, is not the stage but the wheelchair bound guy at the back (where I retreated to because if you know me, you’ll testify that I just about come up to sweaty armpit level and there was a box I could stand on at the back by a concession stand) – he was no longer wheelchair bound but scooped up by one of his friends and they were both going crazy, lost in the music.  Great live performances really can make you less earthbound.

3. Levelling the Land by The Levellers

What can I say?  I was a student once too.  This reminds me of the kind of shared experience you only get with your closest friends and a big bag of marijuana (which, obviously, no-one inhaled, *ehem, ehem*).  Seriously though, this is the album I come back to when I want that dose of nostalgia that only music can bring (you know the one, the visceral one that actually takes you back to where you used to listen to it).  When nothing else is right, out comes ‘Levelling the Land’ and all becomes well in the world again.

4. Blood Sugar Sex Magik by Red Hot Chili Peppers

‘Under the Bridge’ was the soundtrack to one of those evenings in life where everything and everyone comes together at the right time, in the right place and in a random and unexpected fashion.  I remember very clearly the moment when we all sat around an open fire and listened to it on repeat (which in those archaic days involved a lot of rewinding of cassette tapes).  It was a moment of change in all our lives because our close group of friends was separating after the final year of school and it was the last time we all sat together as childhood allies without complications of partners, widening networks of friends and a hefty amount of mileage between us.  It was the reason I packed this album when I set off around South East Asia later that year, the reason it now has many more associations than just teen-angst, most vividly listening to it on the verandah of a shack in a hill-tribe village in the Golden Triangle north of Chiang Mai, Thailand watching children who could barely toddle wielding machetes and women in an eclectic mix of national dress and modern attire.  It still comes with me everywhere, but in the age of the iPod at least I don’t have to carry the brick sized Walkman that I did then (which is a good job because some mean individual filched it from my backpack when I was camped out at Bangkok airport waiting for a flight to Indonesia … ).

5. Ten by Pearl Jam

In the true spirit of leaving the best ’til last … I bought this when it was released (one of those kind of random purchases that I used to make when I actually had money to make random purchases) and it blew me away.  It opened up the whole Seattle scene to me – I was so a grunge-head, even had a scruffy lumberjack shirt to boot.  This is one of those albums that just become your best friends.  When I first went away to Uni, I was a mature student (well, chronologically at least) and didn’t really need a new complement of friends so it was an upheaval.  I’d only just got back from a fantastic few months travelling and it seemed odd to be sitting in a room in halls having to redefine my connections (I would say ‘a bare room’ but I tend to move with at least 3 boxes of books, anywhere, even abroad … and some rugs … and some posters … erm … and the odd piece of furniture …) and this was the album I chose to listen to while I hung out the window looking at the lights in the botanical gardens on the other side of the road (which I never got around to visiting despite the best intentions …).  I finally got to see Pearl Jam live in Warsaw on a bitterly cold November 1st (Day of the Dead in Poland, so I’d spent the day walking round cemetaries looking at candles).  I was just blown away by the concert and the fact that I’d finally managed to see one of my all-time favourite bands live (albeit in a really unexpected place).  We slept the night on Warszawa Centralna (the main train station) and it was FREEZING.  There’s a real underbelly of society that spends the night in Warszawa Centralna (or at least there was, over a decade ago) – drug dealers, prostitutes, drunks – but none of that mattered because hell, I’d just seen Pearl Jam and they had played loads of songs from ‘Ten’.  The fact that this is the first back catalogue re-release leading up to the band’s 20th anniversary in 2011 just makes me feel old!

So, what are your 5 and why would you choose them?