I got my DTX!

Took me a while to compile this little list today. It’s the stuff I listened to between the ages of 14 and 18. Under the heading "Major" is listed albums I couldn’t have lived without and that today, for the most part, have stood the test of time. This is the soundtrack of my teen years.

Major

Peter Hammill – The Silent Corner and the Empty Stage
Aphrodite’s Child – 666
Genesis – Selling England by the Pound
King Crimson – Lizard
Vangelis – Earth
Syrinx – Long Lost Relatives
Perth County Conspiracy – Does Not Exist

Minor

Gentle Giant – Acquiring the Taste
Genesis – Foxtrot, Nursery Cryme
Audience – House on a Hill, Lunch
Roy Harper – Lifemask
Van Der Graaf Generator – H to He (Who Am the Only One), Pawn Hearts

What I thought of as great mainstream music

Led Zeppelin – I-IV
Pink Floyd – Atom Heart Mother, Meddle, More, Ummagumma
Jethro Tull – Thick as a Brick, Aqualung
Emerson, Lake & Palmer – self-titled, Tarkus

 

I’ve been meaning to pop a mini review of this album on the site for many a week now. When I first bought this thing, I have to admit I didn’t get it. It just sounded like so much fluffy Euro-pop and it was hard to take it seriously. Then I got hooked on Track 6, “Beautiful Day Without You”.

Not long after I became slightly nuts about playing Track 2 whenever I was driving. And then the kicker happened.

Track 7. It was Fall-Down-And-Cry-In-A-Corner-For-A-Week time. Holy. Shit. I can’t tell you the last time a track hit me so hard or so deeply. It’s called “What Else Is There?” and I’m not going to say anything about it till you run out and buy this album for yourselves.

Is the rest of the album as good? Even half as good? Man. who cares! For about three weeks there I was swept up in that song’s wake. I’d plan out when I could listen to it next. I had to be alone in the car, couldn’t be too much traffic, couldn’t have too much other crap on my mind. And I’d put in and cringe, thinking, now I’ve done it, here she comes! And it was shiver time. It was “I can’t friggin stand how great this is” time.

Is it a context sensitive track? Is it just me? Do you have to listen to the whole album first to “get it”? Hell, I don’t know. But someone should give these guys a honkin’ big award, Do Not Pass Go, Collect 2 Billion Dollars and Proceed to Every Music Hall of Fame Ever Built. Thank you, Royksopp.

This is one of those rare records that, from start to finish, maintains a lush live groove without ever getting tedious and without ever being intrusive. Low-key as it is, every note sounds fresh and rocks harder than a twenty foot stack of joist-rattling house music. If a group of the greatest acid jazz/drum & bass/remixers had to play a three hour live show, what would it sound like in the third hour when things are winding down, people just want to slouch on the sofas and groove rather than dance? That’s Chocolate Elvis. If I were rating albums according to how many times they’d bear repetition, this one would be in the Top 5 for sure.