azurelunatic | Five pivotal albums (lemming)

Rules
List 5 albums that are pivotal to you. Write about a special memory for one song from each album. Tell us who the albums make you think of. Tag 5 friends to do the same.

pyrogenic did this one, and I just have to jump onboard, though I may skip tagging specific people.

Flood, by They Might Be Giants ~ 1995/6

Picture a 15-year-old Lunatic, wearing a black ribbed tight-fitting t-shirt (back when those were just starting to come in) over a long flowy straight pink skirt. Picture her chin-length brown hair flying around as she dances barefoot, barely aware of her surroundings. You can't go back to Constantinople / It's a long time gone, Constantinople...

pyrogenic was there. moonberryq was there. Alice was there, and Emily, and Dave, and oh! So many of us. Kathy. Amol. Jimmy. Gella. Rebecca/Gertrude. boojum was an invisible presence. She'll be waiting in Istanbul. I know I'm forgetting people. But we were there, and it was timeless, and how we danced. (I got the album somewhat after coming home, and played it endlessly.) It was the album of friendship and quirky humor and noticing that lyrics that read dreadfully on paper just worked in the music.

It's nobody's business but the Turks.

Document, by R.E.M. ~ Late December, 1995

I slip the CD caddy all loaded up into Majel (the pretty Quadra 660 AV named in honor of the noted voice actress Majel Barrett, as the computer could speak in a calm female voice and take voice command), and select my favorite songs to repeat themselves several times. It's a party, with the adults downstairs, and me holding quiet court upstairs in my new room with the screensaver and my new lava lamp lighting up the room. I am dating -- almost engaged to -- the most beautiful girl in the world, and I am so very happy. I giggle and whisper with Dad's co-worker Glenn's daughter Sara. Sara is a year younger than me and a year older than my baby sister Tay-Tay. We've had such fun in the past playing together, and I want to tell her my secrets.

I've been testing to see who I can tell about my girlfriend. So I tell her about my friend Savil who's dating a girl who goes to the U. "Eww, gross," Sara says. I go silent, and eventually Sara wanders off to re-join the party.

It's the end of the world as we know it. I'm drifting away from the people my parents have chosen to populate their lives with. I am making this conscious disconnection from them. I can't make them accept me. I have to just step back, lest my wiring and my love disrupt my parents' lives. But. I feel fine.

Parallel Lines, by Blondie ~ 1997

I'm sitting outside Austin Lathrop High School after the Driver's Education class with Mr. Bodle, with the tape player that's been in the household for years in my hand. It's got fresh batteries. It's only monaural, but it's what I have. I'm snuggled up in the battered brown leather jacket with the vastly inaccurate map on shredded silk lining inside. The jacket was from a thrift store, and I love it so much, because it makes me look so vastly cool (I fondly believe). It isn't black, but it is leather. "Fade Away and Radiate" is in my ears. I am alone, for the moment, and waiting. I do a lot of waiting alone in these moments, but I'm singing to myself, loud and proud and strong. Sometimes it's for joy. Sometimes it's to shout out the pain. But I'm always singing.

That's a Shawn era, with Shawn a silent presence just in front of me. I trailed after him like a guardian angel, and that's how Death Child always saw me. Shawn was turned on to the TV culture, and I wasn't.

Aquarium, by Aqua ~ 2000

This is the album of my relationship with BJ, the good times and the surreal times. It might not have been, except George left it on for three days straight on repeat, sort of to counteract the fact that BJ and I were having noisy sex. "Good Morning, Sunshine."

George. BJ. BJ's scary little brother. Sue-bug and John. The whole crowd at work. Bonnie the little red car and long drives at night for the sheer joy of the road and motion. My virtual aunt renting us her little cabin. Independence.

Country Grammar, by Nelly ~ 2001

I moved in with Sis in April of 2001, and our musical tastes clashed. She loved rap. I hated it. I loved R.E.M. She hated it worse than she hated country music. We eventually worked out that she couldn't take twangy minor chords, and that I did not do weaponry and lip service to "no drama" that worked out in practice to shooting anyone who tried to start drama. She conceded that she liked some of their covers that didn't have the problematical chords. I conceded that the beat and sound of nonviolent rap songs could be all right.

Think of a hazy hot evening in late April or early May, with two white girls in a beat-up old used Buick Skyhawk with about three weeks more life in it cruising down the streets of Phoenix, windows down with no AC, belting out the chorus of "Ride Wit' Me"...

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You know, I thought it was weird that my favorite band (R.E.M.) didn't end up on the list, and I realize it's because they weren't ever anything but a really good band -- they didn't introduce me to anything new, no one important started me listening to them, and I listened to them alone more than I ever had other people around me who felt the same about them. Really, collecting all their import singles was a very lonely obsession.

Execpt for one song: "I am Superman" with you guys.

(Forgive me for cross-posting this comment to my journal.)

Whereas you started me off listening to them, and then Emily and I cross-referenced them to each other constantly, because of you. Then when Shawn came into the picture, he brought in Out of Time, which was #7 on the list, and that was followed by Automatic for the People, which was the recovery-from-Shawn and support of Death Child and hanging out with

boojum on the phone album.

Automatic for the People was #6. Kim seemed to associate it very much with DIGIClan, especially "Nightswimming".

LJ is made for cross-posting and spinning off on tangents.

There was "It's the End of CTY As We Know It", but that never really went anywhere except for "Sugar high hairdye kamikaze fruitfly". "Jellybean boom" already fit. ;)

Five pivotal albums (lemming)

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