My favorites...

I'm a musical voyeur. I love looking through people's record collections and trying to figure out which bands have had the greatest impact on their musical lives. As I look through my music, there are many times where I think "Oh yeah, I bought that because I was listening to so and so, and they were their favorite band." It's almost like reading those genealogy passages in the Bible -- begat, begat, begat.

The favorite band/album question is also interesting because it can reveal how a person listens to music. What they listen for, what turns them on, what they find important. For example, some people understood better where Lester Bangs was coming from once they learned that he idolized Velvet Underground's White Light/White Heat and Van Morrison's Astral Weeks. Some of his rants begin to make a little more sense when put in that context.

So I'm going to post about some of my all-time favorite non-jazz, non-classical albums. (Yeah, that's awkward, but I'm avoiding pop/rock.) Right now, there are 13 on my list, and like any self-respecting music fan, those 13 are liable to shift position at any moment depending on my mood, which way the wind blows, whatever. But I've got them written down, and if I've forgotten something, I'll slip a .5 in there somewhere.

Like anyone's list, there will be some things on there that don't make the critic's top lists of infinity, but this isn't about that... These are my favorites.