Most Influential Albums: HUM

Yes, this is technically two albums... it isn't a double-album, but for me it might as well have been in the fall of 1998, when I discovered HUM.

The single "Stars" from HUM's previous disk, You'd Prefer an Astronaut, had some airplay on what was just beginning to be dubbed "Modern Rock" radio. I loved "Stars", but the radio personalities in Tulsa never announced who it was. In those days, you couldn't just Shazam your way into knowledge of a cool artist - if someone didn't tell you who made that awesome track blasting your car speakers into oblivion, you just didn't know.

For this reason, when I had time to kill, you could usually find me in a record store listening through all the preview CD kiosks. It took either a very confident or very stupid artist and a label with money to burn to get a CD in one of those headphone-attached CD players welded into the display aisles. The major labels certainly didn't want anyone deciding not to spend their $15 on a CD because they actually got to hear the thing ahead of time. Why, they just might find out the versions of those Poe songs on the radio aren't even ON the stinkin' CD, not to mention her other songs sound like a mental patient found a cheap keyboard and a tape recorder. I did discover a few artists had great albums via those kiosks though. I digress...

HUM's Downward is Heavenward album happened to be in such a kiosk at Blockbuster Music (remember them?) in Tulsa on one of my time-killer excursions. The opening track, "Isle of the Cheetah", has a very long intro. But once I heard Matt Talbot's voice, I knew this was the same band from that single I couldn't trace months before. Nobody sounds like Matt. Nobody. Love his voice or hate it - there's no disputing his uniqueness.

It wasn't just that I found the answer to a music riddle. It wasn't just that these were some stellar musicians playing some cool songs. This was the sound I had been chasing on my own projects for years. Heavy. Super heavy. Spinal damage via your ear canal heavy. But there was no growling, screaming, testosterone overloaded frontman barking about darkness and how he was tougher than death. No fake macho bull to appeal to skinny teenage boys in black t-shirts, just some killer melody lines sung by a guy who was only moderately able to carry a tune. This was space rock of the highest degree.

I had been trying to make music of this sort through a few different bands I was in, but nobody else seemed to get it. HUM was making the albums I wished I could make. So I, of course, bought this album and its predecessor.

Most albums that hit me spend a lot of time on repeat in my CD player (or now, my iPod), and these 2 were no exception. Truly, they drove me to exceed even my normal predisposition for immersing myself in a record. I played these HUM albums constantly. I became certifiably addicted to these disks - I just didn't feel normal unless I was listening to HUM. I never got tired of them, but on rare occasion I desired something softer to fit a different mood I was in, and so I'd spin through Frente's Marvin The Album (a sugary female-fronted Australian pop group my friend Phillip hipped me to) once and then get right back to HUM. This went on for nearly a year.

When I finally recognized how disturbingly fixated I was with these albums, I gave them to a friend for safe keeping to kick my HUM habit back down to a healthy level. If I had ever found like-minded musicians (and a drummer good enough - Bryan St. Pere deserves to be mentioned alongside John Bonham and Dave Grohl as one of the best rock drummers to ever pick up the sticks), I probably would have been very happy playing in a HUM cover band for the rest of my life.

Alas, as with so many of my favorite band's albums, this would be HUM's last. The group was dropped from their label and broke up. I learned that Matt Talbot went on to start his own recording studio in Illinois. So it's no suprise that when it came time for me to produce an album for my then band, Skyblynde, I sought Matt out and booked time at Great Western Record Recorders (now renamed Earth Analog) in Champaign, IL.

That experience is worthy of a blog entry on its own. I returned to Matt's studio to record the drums for the Hello God This is Gregory Hyde album. I've heard few drum tracks from other studios that can compare to the sonic quality of what Matt's live room offers.

I still play these albums often, and each time I wonder to myself, "Why don't I just listen to this every day and ignore everything else on my iPod?" I still have no answer for that question.

Most Influential Albums: Queen - Flash Gordon Soundtrack

My first childhood memories are of my brother, Chris, and I teaming up with Todd and Wade (our same-aged next-door neighbors) to battle Darth Vader and the Empire, wage war against the opposing yard with “dirt clods” (handfuls of packed, drying Oklahoma mud), or engaging in our favorite pastime; reenacting Flash Gordon. Not the comic or black-and-white serial from the 1930’s, but the full-on camp of the 1980 film with Sam Jones.

“Fans” would be too conservative a description. We were rabid, addicted Flash Gordon zealots. If we weren’t watching it (time registers much differently at that age, but it seemed it was on HBO every day), we were turning swing sets into space ships, sand boxes into alien swamp pits, and big wheels into rocket cycles. Offers to ride along on shopping trips were declined, excursions to the park or zoo were bailed on, and quite a few meals were even missed solely for the sake of being able to once again join forces to destroy the evil Mungo minions and their ruthless, alien tyrant of a leader, Ming the Merciless.

It’s interesting that we never chose one of us to play Ming. He was always just an invisible evil. At that age, too young to yet know all the injustice and cruelty in the real world, Ming was the worst thing my naive, still-forming mind could conjure. Anyone who wanted to kill innocent people and damage the earth MUST be an insane, goatee-sporting alien from light-years away. Everybody on earth was one of the “good guys”, everywhere I could go was safe, and all was right with the world – the “world” being my one little block in Jenks, America. And as for Ming, why worry? We’ve got Flash on our side.

My dad bought us the Flash Gordon soundtrack, written and performed by Queen, on vinyl (which I still have) and transferred a copy to cassette tape so we could rock out to it in the car. This started a trend which later included the soundtracks for Star Wars and a couple of the Rocky movies. But this is truly the first album I ever owned or remember hearing.

I always eagerly anticipated a part in the song “Hero” - the thunderous, impacting tom hits when the band comes in full-force. Not having ever seen a drum kit, I thought they had to be hammers hitting metal. My pulse surged every time I heard those bombastic impacts. I felt electrified, exhilarated, and a little frightened all in the same moment. Thus began my love of enormous rock drum sounds.

The soundtrack is peppered with sound clips from the movie, which is engaging on so many completely different levels. Awkward, annoying, thrilling, laughable, yet inspiring the voice-overs may be, but the music just plain rocks. Queen was killer, and Brian May is a genius. No, really. The guy has an astrophysics PHD. Look it up. His composing and guitar skills are out of this world (pun intended), and a couple of the songs represented here are among Queen's best in my opinion.

This album is awesome. For sentimental reasons as well as audio content, it will always be a fave of mine.

Don't own it yet? Listen and buy it here:

  

Most Influential Albums: Stone Temple Pilots - Core

This was the first CD I ever bought.

I purchased this album the day Jurassic Park was released in theaters - June 11, 1993. My brother Chris, my buddy Dustin Keith, and I were planning to see that Cretaceous blockbuster flick and had time to kill. Earlier in the day, Chris drove Dustin and I to a guy's house to buy some comic books the fella needed to unload for monetary reasons. I still have those comics, including a copy of X-Men #1 autographed by Jim Lee - and am hoping all the other kid's moms threw their comic mags away while they were off at college so mine will actually be worth something significant one day. But I digress...

That summer, for a few months previous, my brother and I had been flipping out over this song that would play on the radio as we drove home from church on Wednesday nights. Windows down (the A/C was busted), radio blaring, American-made Ford steel creaking as we hurled ourselves at breakneck speed down I-44 in Tulsa listening to this song. We strongly suspected it was Pearl Jam, but the chorus had no lyrical hook, so it was anyone's guess to what the title was, and it wouldn't have helped guessing since the word "Plush" is never uttered in the song.

I eventually heard a radio personality (this was the era of the death of the real D.J.'s) announce the name of the group. I think I called a record store and asked if they had the "Stone Tower Captains" album or something along those lines. No dice.

But on that fateful day when we were killing time at Tulsa's Promenade mall before watching dinosaurs killing Samuel Jackson and eating Newman from Seinfeld, I saw the cover of this album in the CD bin at Camelot Music (a terribly overpriced precursor to FYE and those other vile mall music shops). Stone Temple Pilots... THAT'S what they were called. My brother had recently acquired an archaic CD player from a kid at school, so I opted for the CD instead of the usual cassette tape. It was 1993 - this was the freakin' future, man.

The album itself doesn't offer up much in the way of surprises, but what it does, it does REALLY well. It's a heavy, rocking collection of grunge-inspired, heroin-fueled angst. The raw, biting attitude is expected, as are the vague, surreal "what does it mean to you?" lyrics. But the band is locked in within nanoseconds of each other, the production quality and sonic clarity are outstanding (Brendan O'Brien, my fave producer, was at the helm), and Scott Weiland's voice never sounded better. My guess is he hadn't yet cocaine-carved his septum into a Grand Canyon diorama. Also, Dean DeLeo's chord usage is a master-lesson in songwriting.

"Dead and Bloated" kicks off the album. Not just kicks, but drop-kicks with atom bombs strapped to its boots. Groove like that is hard to find. For some reason, most drummers seem to hate Eric Kretz - I have no idea why since he's better than most of the guys in the game. True, he's never flashy, but in the departments of groove and feel, he's over-stocked. Other highlights are the radio staples "Wicked Garden", "Sex Type Thing", the groove-o-saurus "Where The River Goes", and my fave "Crackerman".

Listening to this CD as often as I did got my mind leaning more creatively towards song structures and chord progressions. It also gave a bit of inspiration to my dying my hair fire-engine red (as Scott's was in the video for "Plush") several years later.

Don't own it? Listen and buy it here:

  

Most Influential Albums: The Beatles - Magical Mystery Tour

Roll up, roll up for the Magical Mystery Tour, step right this way!

Technically not an intended 'album' per se, this was more a collection of previously released singles tacked on with tunes for the movie soundtrack of the same name by The Beatles.

"But Gregory, you love the Beatles. Can't we just assume you'd post all of their albums in your Most Influential section of the blog and move along?"

Not so. Believe it or not, I don't love every Beatles album (gasp!). True story.

The White Album, monumental success though it may be, seems to me a scattered mess of about 7 great songs clustered into a collection with several decent tunes, a little album filler, and a few outright junk songs. Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band is about the same. Many consider this blasphemy, but I'm just calling it as I see (hear) it. You really shouldn't let it ruin your day though...

But not Magical Mystery Tour, no sir. These songs are bulletproof from front to back. Many of these songs are worth the price of the album all by themselves. There never was or will be anything like "I Am The Walrus", there will probably never be better feel-good pop songs than "Hello Goodbye" and "Your Mother Should Know", no better trippy songs than "Strawberry Fields Forever" and "Magical Mystery Tour", and nothing that sums up life quite as well as "All You Need Is Love".

Regardless of how this collection came together, it bears a more concise, air-tight structure than most intended albums ever get close to possessing.

And for all the Ringo haters out there, you simply must listen to the opening track - his ability to move the song through so many tempos, turnarounds, and feels without ever losing the vibe is jaw-dropping.

So throw on an animal suit, make a withdrawal from the zoo, give Poe a kick on your way up the hill from Penny Lane, and throw this CD in the player.

Don't own it yet? Buy it here:

Influential Albums: Dishwalla - And You Think You Know What Life's About

In August of 1998, I was driving down the road and heard a song on the radio. Instantly, I knew it had to be the voice of J.R. Richards, vocalist for Dishwalla. I nearly drove into oncoming traffic as I madly reached for the volume control to crank their new song, "Once In a While".

I discovered Dishwalla when they opened for Letters To Cleo at The Cain's Ballroom in Tulsa on their previous album's tour. I tried turning everyone on to the goodness that was Dishwalla's Pet Your Friends album. These failed converts scoffed, made fun of the band name (you expect me to listen to a band called Dishwater??!), laughed at the album title, and refused to even listen to the CD. About a year later, "Counting Blue Cars" was all over the radio, and the schmucks who so smarmily mocked this group became instant fans. This happened A LOT back then... (sigh)

So their sophomore effort was finally going to be unleashed on the mass public. I drove to a nearby Barnes & Noble and found out they already received a shipment of the new Dishwalla CDs prior to the release date. I somehow convinced them to sell me one ahead of time. I'm crafty like that...

So to home I went, shut my bedroom door, turned out the lights (it now being nighttime), and immersed myself into this album - a large, cheshire-cat grin plastered across my face throughout. I listened again... and again... until it was about 2:00 a.m., at which point I called my bud Matt to inform him I was in the possession of the coolest freaking album that had come out in years. He was less than thrilled to hear the news.

Given the history of my Dishwalla-pitching in the past, most of my friends jumped on board with this album, though none quite as whole-heartedly as myself.

If you want to talk about emotional / musical roller-coaster albums, this one deserves more than a nod. It runs the gamut of pulse-pounding anthems, introspective heartache ("Until I Wake Up" makes my soul hurt - and is well worth the price of the entire album), and mysterious, groove-laden, coolsville trip-rock. In fact, the last 2 songs on the CD barely sound like they were recorded by the same band, yet they work perfectly to give you a breath right when needed and complement the brain burn the earlier songs on the album give.

Due largely in part to the production style, the album is bright, brash and almost harsh at points, granting the guitars Rodney Browning plays through his Bogner amp a particularly severe bite and intensity not heard on many other disks. Samples and loops weave seamlessly in and out without taking away from the raw, rock asthetic of the band. Drummer George Pendergast's unique style and creative techniques lend the songs more musicality than most drummers can muster.

The musicianship of this band is stellar. The songs are outstanding. If I could trade my voice for anyone's it would be J.R. Richards. And it has one of the best album titles ever.

And You Think You Know What Life's About...

Don't own it yet? Listen & buy your copy here:

  

Influential Albums: The Beatles - Abbey Road

Of course.

This album is a classic for a very, very good reason: It's one of the best collections of songs ever recorded.

Though there may be certain songs on other albums by The Beatles that have a more sentimental place than some tracks on this record, Abbey Road is possibly my favorite album by the Fab Four for a few reasons, but particularly for its versatility.

I always keep this album in mind when I start thinking my songs are too sporadic and unconnected. Those qualities are what make this album so endearing; so engaging through every single track. I usually hate "desert island" hypotheticals, but I think this just might be my desert island album of all time for that very reason.

Abbey Road has it all: Cool, vibing songs. Fun, upbeat, silly songs. Love songs that define the genre. Trippy, psychadelia-influence. Ballads that lull you into waking dreams. Grand, illustrious, orchestral masterpieces. Intense, brazen rock. All performed by some musicians at the peak of their abilities and creativity, overflowing with emotion throughout. The tensions that were coming to a head with the group at this time catapulted this, their final album, all the way to the bleedin' moon and back.

The recording quality is also the tip-top of what George Martin and the lads achieved. George's guitar tone on "Something" is outstandingly warm. Ringo's tea-towel muffled drums are like being punched with a 10-story tall balloon. Paul's bass is just Paul's bass... it always sounds that freakin' good, nothing new.

George really swung for the fences with "Something" and "Here Comes The Sun" and (in my mind) proved himself capable of being every bit as much a songwriting powerhouse as Lennon/McCartney. Sadly, I don't think he maintained that edge without said tensions driving him to compete on that level.

There's undoubtedly never been a better swan song for a group. Up to the blistering rock solos that Paul, George, and John play that build the calamity up to let you softly down on the scripture-esque "The End". I cried the first time I heard the whole thing front to back.

If I put out songs the caliber of "Come Together", "Something", "Here Comes the Sun", "Because", and the closing half of this record all on one album... well I might just have to call it a day too. How could they top Abbey Road? Simple. They didn't. (sigh)

Don't own it yet? Buy it here:

Influential Albums: Veruca Salt - American Thighs

Words can't express how much I love this album. But I'm gonna try...

Back in 1995 I was hanging out at my buddy Mark's apartment and the video for "Seether" came on MTV (they used to actually play music videos back then). I was entranced. The other guys in the room were making fun of me for being so enraptured by these weird, nerd girls in slips eating ground up, raw meat out of dismembered baby dolls and occasionally singing like they had sucked in helium. I didn't care. This was awesome.

A week later, I developed a pretty serious case of bronchitis. My grandmother drove me to the doctor, and on the trip back home, she agreed to let me stop off at Media Play (a store which I sorely miss... they started an incredible CD price war in Tulsa with Best Buy around that time which drove all the CD prices down to $9). I was praying the album cover wouldn't look anything like the video, or there would be no chance I'd be able to buy it without a long lecture. Fortunately, the cover was tame, so she actually paid for it (thanks, G-ma), and I headed home and popped on the headphones while I played video games and hacked my lungs up.

I probably heard this entire disk more than 20 times that day. I was HOOKED. The playing is sloppy in all the right ways, impacting, gritty, yet with moments of elegance here and there. This was grunge, yeah, but a far cry from the Seattle thing, and with much more creativity than just 3 chords and screaming about angst, apathy, and heroin.

The recording quality is stellar. This is another one of my stereo test CDs. The low end on the bass is appendix-shaking, and the crisp, brilliant highs on the ride cymbal bell takes you to the other end of the sonic spectrum.

There are some who will say "But Gregory, they were just ripping off the Breeders!". Kinda true... also like saying Guns 'N Roses ripped off L.A. Guns. It's the same sound, but in my humble opinion, The Breeders had a formula that they really couldn't see or reach the potential of. Veruca Salt was somehow able to construct skyscrapers off of a blueprint The Breeders were using to build dog houses. Plus, Nina and Louise were waaaaay cuter. :)

Every single time this album cues up with that fuzzed-out midrange heavy guitar and "I'm spinning out..." on "Get Back", it's like the climb up on the first big drop of a rollercoaster. The album just rolls from there. "All Hail Me" still creeps me out. I still rewind the scream at the beginning of "Seether" multiple times before I let the rest of the song play. I still sing at the top of my lungs with the whoa-ohs at the end of "Spiderman '79". The harmony parts throughout the album are breath-taking, and the lyrics on all the songs, but especially "Wolf", "Sleeping Where I Want", and "Celebrate You" still conjure up such vivid, demented imagery... I will adore this album for all time.

And if anyone out there knows how to get the guitar sound on the lead that plays out at the end of "25", please let me know.

Don't own it yet? Listen and buy it here:

  

Influential Albums: Cream - Disraeli Gears

This was the first cassette tape I ever bought with my own money.

Around the age of 11, my brother had begun taking guitar lessons and started a quest of finding the best guitarists to emulate. Though I hadn't yet picked up an instrument of my own, I was already an avid music fan, so I shared my brother's enthusiasm for finding new players/groups to check out. Of course, Eric Clapton ranked pretty high on almost every one's recommendation list.

So Chris (my brother) bought a cassette single of "Bad Love" off of Clapton's Journeyman album. We wore that thing into the ground, rewinding and replaying it for hours as we did our homework after school. It's just an incredible song. Clapton's guitar work was everything we had heard it would be (SIDEBAR: Phil Collin's drumming on that track is also artwork in and of itself), and we were instant fans.

Chris later tracked down some of Clapton's earlier group work - namely The Very Best of Cream and the Blind Faith album (I had to draw a black t-shirt over the topless girl on the cover so as not to freak our mom out). Blind Faith didn't have much appeal then, since there weren't any rockin' guitar solos, though I rediscovered the album once my ears had matured a bit. The Cream tape was great though. It's hard to imagine some of those sounds are actually coming out of a guitar.

A while after, I had a birthday coming up and was allowed to pick out a cassette tape as a present at our local mall music store. As I scanned the tape racks (not yet in the market for those new-fangled CDs), I stumbled across this album. An actual Cream album, not just an incongruous selection of cuts. Thanks to the Greatest Hits tape, I was already familiar with songs like "Sunshine of Your Love" and "Strange Brew", but "Tales of Brave Ulysses" (which I hadn't heard since it was only available on the Greatest Hits CD, not the tape) quickly became my new fave song of all time. "Blue Condition" was another favorite, with Ginger Baker's sloppy, cockney vocals making that track jump off the album.

There was obviously some psychedelic influence creeping into the blues-based trio around this time. I was entranced by the subdued, almost eerie vibe to "World of Pain" and "Dance the Night Away". The slow, intense build of "We're Going Wrong" still gives me chills every time I hear it. And "Mother's Lament" is just brilliantly hilarious.

"Outside Woman Blues" also became a staple in my live set. If you've seen me play live more than once, chances are you've heard this song, though my rendition is a hybrid of Clapton's take and the original version.

This album was a major influence on me creatively, and it was also one of my major inspirations for learning bass. Jack Bruce's approach, attack, and note selection were always the target I was aiming for as a young bassist. His tone... not so much. These Cream albums weren't recorded very well, and personally, I think the remastered versions that came out in the 90's sound even worse. Clapton's guitars were already ridiculously high in the mix, and the bass and Baker's drums were barely audible on a few tracks... the remastered versions only amplify these problems.

I'd love to hear an entire remix of this, if it were ever possible. Chances are the only thing they have to work with are 2-track masters, but I still often wonder what it would sound like to have these redone by one of the Lord-Alge brothers.

Fun tidbit... the day I bought this cassette, the guy at the checkout counter asked me if I liked this new band Pearl Jam. I told him I had no idea who they were. He informed me the guy in line ahead of me paid for their new CD, Ten and forgot to take it with him. It was mine if I wanted it. I didn't have a CD player (and wouldn't even know anyone who owned one for a few years), so I declined. It was about a year later when the video for "Even Flow" broke on MTV and I wholeheartedly regretted my decision.

Don't own this album yet? Listen and buy it here:

  

Influential Albums: King's X - Ear Candy

If you happen to be either:

A) a Christian who digs heavy rock music, or

B) a major, major, raging, music geek

you know who this band is. For everybody else... allow me to introduce you to King's X.

A power trio from the Midwest, these guys came to prominence in the late 80's / early 90's as a quasi-hair metal group with a dash of proselytizing fervor (or so it seemed).

They eventually garnered a major label deal on Atlantic thanks to their growing cult fan base which was fueled by heavy grooves, Ty Tabor's guitar virtuoso solos, and Doug Pinnick's soulful, Hendrix-conjuring vocals.

At times bluesy, at times full-throttle rock, occasionally experimental, and often laden with Beatle-esque harmonies throughout, the group was a musician's dream, but were always seemingly just out of reach of the general public's acceptance.

After a few releases, the band was paired with über-producer Brendan O'Brien for their album Dogman. That disk was HEAVY... tuned down to D, then dropped another half-step across the board, and engineered to make the bass rattle your internal organs loose.

They played on major network late night TV shows, they toured endlessly with future Seattle grunge movement super stars, and they even had a primo spot on the bill at Woodstock '94. Yet this disk, ground-breaking as it was, kept with their previous history of being too far ahead of their time to do them any good in the present. Though without question, almost every heavy rock band thereafter followed the Dogman playbook line for line.

Then... silence. For years we all wondered what these guys were up to. Rumors circulated, conspiracy theories abounded about why they cut their hair, and most of their Christian fans gasped in horror when they heard the report that the new album had the F-word on it somewhere (even though it wasn't true).

And then out of nowhere, Ear Candy dropped. I listened to this for the first time in a back bedroom at my grandmother's house through some headphones. Upon that initial listen, I thought these guys had finally done it... there were undeniable, unquestionable radio hits on this disk. Their day had finally come.

"Lookin' for Love" would be the smash hit of the year on rock radio, "Mississippi Moon" would be their crossover chart-topper, and "A Box" would be played at high school proms across the land. "Sometimes", "The Train", and "Thinking & Wondering" were also songs I could see getting some airtime at that point in the melting pot of what was "Alternative Modern Rock Radio".

Yeah right... Atlantic Records pulled the funding for the marketing & promotion, the disk sank like a rock, and none of these tracks ever saw the light of day on mainstream radio. Then Atlantic promptly dropped them from the label. Gasp. (sarcasm)

A lot of King's X fans will tell you their best album was their 2nd disk, Gretchen Goes to Nebraska, but unless you like a monsoon of Aqua Net and spandex on your lead singer, and all that goes with it, disregard that info. This album is where it's at. Some of the best songwriting and performing that came out of the entire decade of the 1990's is found on these 13 tracks (Ok... "67" is just freaking weird, I admit, but it grows on you).

This was, in my mind, the pinnacle of King's X's career. After this it seemed like the air went out of the tires. The albums became more obviously thrown together, Doug changed his name to Dug and came out of the closet and completely recanted his faith (which turned off more than a few of the Christian rock crowd), and the high quality of songwriting and performing began to fade. But this album is still a gem among my collection.

It's got all the goods. Lyrics, melody, musicianship, intensity, sensitivity, and a song called "American Cheese". What more could you ask for?

Don't own it yet? Listen & buy it here:

   

Most Influential Albums: Zakk Wylde - Book of Shadows

Zakk Wylde... jeez. My first real rock concert was Ozzy Osbourne & Alice in Chains at the Tulsa Fairgrounds race track, next to Driller Stadium in the early 90's (the now laughably titled "No More Tours Tour"). That Ozzy album & tour was a wake-up call to guitarists everywhere. Ibanez guitars, rack effects, and solid-state amps got ditched for Les Pauls, Marshalls, and stomp-boxes. Why? Zakk freaking Wylde, that's why.

Zakk was amazing. Yeah, he had chops for days, looked cooler than anyone on MTV (who else could wear a bowler hat with a bullseye painted on his guitar and still look cool??), but man - that SOUND. I was addicted to that buzz-saw guitar tone and those signature screaming harmonic squeals.

So all of us recently-converted Zakk addicts were crushed when Zakk left Ozzy. We waited in anticipation for his new project, Pride & Glory. When it wasn't metal, but rather a swamp-blues infected Southern Rock that had more influence from the Allman Brothers than from the Van Halen brothers, most Ozz fans were bummed, myself included (I later rediscovered the Pride & Glory album and still dig it immensely). I was also shocked that his voice sounded so deep and bluesy, when he looked much more like a Sebastian Bach-esque pretty boy from that era.

A few years later, I saw this CD in a record store. Given my previous let-down with Pride & Glory, I passed it over a few times, but kept going back whenever I'd return to that store, wondering if it would be as cool as No More Tears. Keep in mind this was before you could preview tracks on the internet... buying an album was a dice roll, so with no radio play, you might be flushing $15 and won't know it until the crap is already in your ears. So I never pulled the trigger...

Fast forward a few years - my buddy and fellow Ozzy fan, Homer Robison, was commenting about this CD one night. He gave me the impression it was worth a listen and offered to let me borrow it. I was working in web design at a company in Tulsa at the time and took the CD to work with me to plug into the headphones while I designed websites for people who always just wanted us to rip off someone else's work... not expecting the disk to be anything more than mediocre.

I was so stunned by how amazing the opening track, "Between Heaven and Hell", was that I was literally immobilized by it. I sat there with my jaw open, staring at my CD player wondering what in the world was going on. I listened to it again... and again... and again... the whole album can't be this awesome, can it?? I decided to find out. Yep, it was.

Given, some albums/songs/movies/books/cult leaders hit you at just the right time in your life to make a life-changing impact when they might not have even scratched the surface a year previous. Maybe that's what happened, but this record resonated with me then beyond anything else I had known.

Truly though, Zakk got ripped with this project. If this had been released by an up & coming black kid from Louisiana and had been executive produced by Clive Davis, this thing would've stomped the Grammys that year. Hard.

It's the perfect marriage between swamp blues, acoustic folk, and heavy rock (if a 3-way marriage can be considered perfect - maybe the album is Mormon?). Yeah, he's still got the riffs & chops (I don't think it's physically possible to play any faster than he does on the solo to "Throwin' It All Away"), his piano work is practically a religious experience, but its the songs on here that seal the deal. Raw, vulnerable, yet lush and undefeatable at the same time. He's hitting the target he aimed for dead-center and then some.

So I absorbed this music for months, indoctrinating anyone who would listen. It sparked a writing streak of southern-fried rock songs in me that lasted for years. The undisputed fan favorite from my band's album at the time was a song called "Better". It's hard to say if that tune, "A Beautiful Girl", "Don't Walk Away", "Southern Highway Love Song", or several other songs I've written would even exist if I hadn't heard Book of Shadows.

Since I was late getting on the bus for this CD, Zakk released yet another new album several months later. This time it was with a new group, Black Label Society... a heavier than hell, grungy, decrepit, tuned-down, scare your mom, beat up your dad, kill your spatula dealer, set fire to your elementary school, and run away with your bus driver's wife, metal band. The kinda crap that weenie, young, white-trash teen boys listen to in order to make themselves seem scary and tough... audio testosterone substitute. Garbage.

However, Black Label would be playing in Joplin, Missouri, and my buddy Homer and his wife were going. I hitched along and experienced the loudest concert ever.

What's that? You have a loud concert story you're thinking of? Nope. Yours wasn't as loud as this. No, it wasn't. We're talking 'Boeing 747 landing on your ear drum' loud; praying for your ears to bleed so the blood can act as an insulator between the razor-blade sharp sound waves and the liquefied brain stem you're trying to prevent from spilling out of your split skull.

And Zakk was scary. By this time he had transformed from pretty boy glam rocker to demon trucker with arms the size of Hulk Hogan's torso, who used gigantic chains for a guitar strap. To top this off, his first guitar, the infamous bullseye Les Paul, had been stolen a few nights previous. He looked like some sort of crazed, beer-guzzling Norse God who hates... well, everything. When he demanded the crowd "Make some F***-ing NOISE!!!", his ice blue, bloodshot eyes got the size of circular saw blades, and we all screamed out of fear, not willingness to show him we were rockin'. We honestly just did whatever he said so he wouldn't come down into the crowd and eat us.

After the show, a line was forming for autographs with Zakk. I didn't really need the signature, but I just had to tell him what I thought of Book of Shadows. The line went pretty quickly. The metal-head fans in front of me would rave about what a great guitarist he was, and 8-foot tall, world-devouring Zakk would just grunt and sign, without ever looking up. I finally got up to him, and muttered out, "Book of Shadows is my favorite album of all time" (which it honestly was at that point). Zakk stopped, put down the black Sharpie marker, looked me right in the eye, and said, "Man, thanks... that really means a lot. I worked really hard on that album." He shook my hand (HARD), patted me on the back, and said, "Thanks for coming out, dude." Then he went back to grunting at people.

At first I was confused why he took the time to address me personally out of the crowd. My brother put it together and told me, "That's the only album of his that he put his own name on. It's obviously the most personal representation of himself".

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Most Influential Albums: Common Children - The Inbetween Time

I've been a fan of Common Children (and all of Marc Byrd's various projects after their demise) since the very first disk. My friend Chad Bonham had a copy of their debut, Skywire, on cassette and let me listen to it during a nighttime drive to a friend's house. He explained that they "are totally awesome" (true), "rock so hard that you need to pad your pants with double-ply Charmin, because of how hard they're going to kick your butt" (also true), and "sound like a mix between Candle Box and Goo Goo Dolls" (very, very, very, absolutely, falsier than the falsiest of false).

I heard "Hate" followed by "Treasure" and I was hooked. I won't go too far into that experience, because that album will surely get its own entry eventually. They released the album Delicate Fade not long after and then promptly vanished off the face of the earth. Their label (Tattoo records) was gone, no more tour dates were announced, and there wasn't even a peep of them on the web anywhere. I was shattered.

Years passed, and I had all but given up hope that I would ever hear them again. Then one night, on a whim, I did a search online and found a single splash-page announcing an upcoming 3rd album by Common Children, The Inbetween Time. I freaked out.

Needless to say, I signed up, paid the $15 and waited patiently. Ok, rabidly might be a better adverb there... It arrived. I couldn't make myself wait for the typical "at night, in bed, through headphones" approach I preferred, so I threw it in the player in my car (still at nighttime, thankfully) on a drive out to my grandmother's house in the badlands of far West Tulsa. Winding through rain-covered country roads lined with aged, decaying trees, under the stars, the album unfolded like the masterpiece it is.

On a sonic level, you won't ever find an album with this many guitars layered on top of each other that still sounds this present and clear. Marc Byrd is an unparalleled master of manipulating ambient guitar sounds in my opinion. Your mind bathes, swims, and drowns in a universe of echoes and distant melodies. But the real strength of this album is in the depth of feeling it conveys; a flood of emotions from grit-your-teeth anger to heart breaking sadness, contemplative, aching loss to reverent, bliss-filled awe - all compounded with the overwhelmingly immense scope of the soundscape all around you.

There are no singles on this disk. Nothing "radio-worthy". Nothing that the mainstream music industry would bother giving the time of day. But The Inbetween Time can break you and rebuild you over and over again if you let it.

It's one of the best albums ever released. Ever.

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Most Influential Albums: Tugboat Annie - The Space Around You

This is quite possibly the best album you don't own.

I stumbled across this disk back in 2001. I was in a glorified cover rock band called San Dimas and we put a CD up for sale on CDBaby.com. Besides providing album distribution for independent artists, the site also makes recommendations for other bands/CDs that are similar in style so that fans of your stuff can find more music they dig. This album was one of those links from our page. I gave the samples one listen and knew I was on to something amazing. So I bought the CD...

The first day it arrived in the mail (I was living with my brother and sister-in-law in Tulsa at the time), I did my normal CD listening routine: wait until dark, lie down in bed with the lights out, put on my headphones and blast the album all the way through uninterrupted. I was in heaven. I listened to this CD 5 times through that night. For about the next 2 weeks, every night I would repeat the routine, listening through the entire album 2-3 times.... often skipping back over Stop, Wishing Song, Helen of Troy and Away.

This is a disk of flawless, noisy, shiny, battered pop songs. The sonic layers and textures these guys achieved are so lush that you feel like your sense of hearing has gained extra dimensions. Michael Bethmann's voice is an otherworldly, haunting, raspy, yet deeply expressive wonder. The guitar work is unparalleled even by the artists that obviously influenced it. The drumming... kinda sucks, yeah. But if you know what a huge nit-picker of drumming I am, then you know it is NO small statement for me to say the strength of the songs and other performances on this album completely make up for what the drummer(s) lacks.

There are a few albums that are such complete works of art that it is a heinous crime to skip songs, even for the purpose of previewing, and this is one of them. So whenever I attempt to introduce anyone to this disk, it comes with the caveat that they're in for the long haul.

I've actually listened to this album so many times that I use it to test the sound systems of cars, stereos, etc., because I'm so incredibly familiar with exactly how the sonic range should sound on this disk.

I tried desperately to capture many of this album's finer points on my latest album, and the inspiration of simple chord structures underneath a cataclysm of guitar rage still drives my approach to many of my own songs. I'm sure I'll be chasing this sound for a long time to come.

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Most Influential Albums: The Beatles - Help!

This is probably the album that shaped me the most, above all others.

I've always been entranced by the vocal sounds on the title track (possibly my favorite song by The Beatles). How could you NOT be amazed by every sonic nuance of this song?

I spent the majority of my teenage years indulging my "faster, louder, more complex = better" musical tastes. Prog rock and instrumental guitar virtuosos were almost all I was subjecting myself to.

My junior year in high school, I began swapping album recommendations with a friend in my Advertising Design class, (Headless Phil - still a great friend of mine) and when I threw the newest Dream Theater release into the ring, he would counter with... Beatles albums?! But this isn't impressive, is it? Everybody's heard The Beatles. It's Oldies... it's simple... easy... basic... and... wait a minute... freaking brilliant.

Many of Phil's introductions are still faves of mine (Harry Nilsson, Blur's Parklife & The Great Escape albums, Marion), though I don't think it went both ways. It's a safe bet he doesn't have any Galactic Cowboys or Dream Theater albums littering his illustrious collection.

At some point after hearing "I am the Walrus", I started falling in love. I bought the double-disk "red" CD collection of Beatles hits and completely rebooted my musical direction. It didn't take long for me to become somewhat of a fanatic.

Not long after, I was recording some demos with my great friend/engineer/drummer Mark Keefer. At the end of our sessions, we met up at a local burger joint in Tulsa and he gave me this CD, knowing I was interested to hear a proper full Beatles "album".

I plugged it in on my drive home and when "The Night Before" came on, I lost it. This was the coolest thing I had heard in as long as I could remember. I played that track over and over for hours, driving nowhere, just listening to this work of art.

Even though many of the songs on this disk were major singles, I was astounded at how solid each song is. This CD was still on repeat in my player months later. Also adding to my fervor over this album were my circumstances at the time. I had just gone through a heart-wrenching relationship fiasco and every single track on Help! seemed to directly apply to some situation or feeling I was experiencing as a result.

Due to my aforementioned prog-addiction, it was a little difficult to get past the poor timing of George's guitar volume-pedal on "I Need You", but the strength of the songs lifted me past the production and engineering shortcomings (not yet knowing what innovators they were in this department or the limited resources they had to work with). If they released it today, it would probably be labeled as "alt-country" or something, but in my mind it's one of the best rock albums ever made.

The drum part on "Ticket to Ride" is absolute genius, "Act Naturally" is one of the most fun songs ever recorded, "You Like Me Too Much" is one of George's best, "Yesterday" is a classic heartbreaker, and if "The Night Before" and "Dizzy Miss Lizzy" don't get your pulse racing, you are DEAD.

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