This whole tangled thing got its start back on Facebook—where I was “tagged” and asked to name the “15 albums that most shaped my world”—so it’s only appropriate that today, as I step back from this series to look at its construction, its contents, I return to Facebook.
The other day, after my fifth music-related Facebook status update of the afternoon, I got a message from an old classmate, a person to whom I hadn’t spoken since graduation, a friend with whom I’d long since lost touch, a man called Ed. Anyway, the message read as follows:
“So did all this music fascination start with the Iron Maiden record I let you borrow in junior high?”
It would seem that Ed had not been keeping up with my column, and this series in particular; if he had, he’d have known already that it was precisely with that Iron Maiden record that this music fascination started. Indeed, in the first installment of “Fifteen Albums”—on the subject of Iron Maiden’s Somewhere in Time—I wrote:
I can’t remember first hearing Iron Maiden, although I know it was at my friend Eddie’s house, in his bedroom, on his turntable. I do remember Eddie had heavy-metal record sleeves hanging from his ceiling, by way of decoration—Ozzy Osbourne, Black Sabbath, W.A.S.P…. Eddie’s knowledge of music was impressive, and his enthusiasm was infectious, and I found myself quickly trying to learn as much as I could, so that I could have something like that in my own life—because I was 12, and when you are 12, you need something… Somewhere in Time was the moment I recognized music as something bigger than songs; it was the first time I was able to embrace music as a part of my identity. Iron Maiden was the first band whose T-shirts I wore, the first band whose logo I scrawled onto textbook covers and desks… They were the band on which I built my understanding of music, and as such, the band on which I built my life.
Of course, “Fifteen Albums” is the story of all the bands, the albums, the music, on which I have built my life. The series itself is a project that has consumed much of my year, and last week, after penning Part 10—on the subject of Oasis’ Definitely Maybe—it occurred to me that the series had reached a turning point. That day, I received an e-mail from my friend Scott—Scott, who has not only followed this series, but made a few predictions regarding how the list will look when it’s all said and done (predictions, mind you, that I have not seen). With regard to the Oasis entry, he wrote: “I had the right band, wrong album. I didn’t think you got so heavy into [Oasis] until [the band’s sophomore LP] (What’s the Story) Morning Glory. More concerning, there’s another album I picked that appears (chronologically) to have missed the cut: Verve’s A Storm in Heaven.”
In this regard, Scott was not wrong to be concerned (to the extent anyone should be concerned about such totally irrelevant matters). When I started this series, the only firm rule I set for myself was this: to write these entries in the chronological order in which I first heard the albums. As I noted, I had to pace myself throughout this process, because: “I don’t want to use, say, Parts 1-10 of this list on albums I heard in high school, and then leave myself only five spots to cover the next 16 years of my life. However, once I write about something I first heard in, say, 1990, I can’t go back the following week, decide I left out something I first heard in 1989, and bend my own rules to include it.”
Point is, I can’t go back and now include A Storm in Heaven. But Scott was right: A Storm in Heaven should have made this list.
(In my defense, I included several mentions of A Storm in Heaven in Part 10. Which doesn’t change anything, I guess. But I feel a need to defend myself.)
Furthermore, it occurred to me that while Parts 1-10 did not comprise only albums I heard in high school, their timeframe was fairly limited just the same: 1986 to 1994. Now, musically speaking, those were an especially exciting nine years of my life. (Personally speaking, those years were filled with awkwardness, insecurity and isolation. Ah, adolescence!) But it’s still only nine years. In 1994, when Definitely Maybe was released, I was 19 years old. I’ve heard a lot of great music since then. My life has changed a great deal since then. Just the same, by the rules of my own stupid game, I’ve left myself five spots to cover the last 15 years.
Which is, again, almost EXACTLY what I did not want to do.
Now it makes sense that the majority of the albums that shaped my life would come at earlier ages: There are snowball effects at play here, or ripple effects, or butterfly effects—as Ed noted, my music fascination started with the Iron Maiden record he let me borrow in junior high; naturally, my life was shaped by all those early records.
But my life is still being lived, being shaped. I cannot quantify the effects on my life of an album I heard last week, but I also cannot discount the effects of all the music I have listened to over the last 15 years. So as I move into the final leg of this series (yes, it’s almost over, I promise), it is fair to say that the Final Five* will be a great deal more diverse than those records that preceded them. Their reasons for inclusion will be more varied, perhaps more imaginative, perhaps more arbitrary. I will skip over a lot of great records. I will skip over a lot of years. I will look back a lot in regret—both at the missed opportunities on this list and the missed opportunities in my life. And when I’m done, I’ll get back to all the new records piling up on my desk, and start shaping everything that comes next.