george thorogood and the destroyers - live

toby: growing up with a father who is a die-hard harley man exposes you to an interesting side of life. this kind of music comes along with it. I can’t say I loved it, or that it’s my favorite now, but it reminds me of some pretty good times. and really, you have to smile when you listen to “one bourbon, one scotch, one beer.”

pick up an album by george and the destroyers (I went with “live” but I doubt you could stray too far with his other albums), crank it up, and wish my dad a happy fathers day. he’s a cool guy. and he’s undeniably bad to the bone.

Hall & Oates - Rock n’ Soul Part 1.

jesse:I was about 7 years old when I first memorized every lyric to this record. I don’t think I had any concept of what “Maneater” was actually about (I seem to remember it calling to mind some kind of Godzilla-esque sci-fi creature), but the album has so many hooks that it was hard to ignore, even at such a young age. You have to admit, hearing a 7-year old sing “It’s a bitch girl, but it’s gone too far, ’cause you know it won’t matter anyway” would be quite amusing.

marty robbins - gunfighter ballads and trail songs

clay: My dad did not listen to much music while I was growing up, but I remember this album vividly. The songs of billy the kid and other outlaws are poignant and remarkably sad. This may sound weird, but some of the songs (specifically Utah Carol about a cowboy who lays down his life for a little girl) remind me of the smiths in that they are melancholy ruminations on outsiders.

On most cds you are lucky if one third of the songs are good, on this record  almost every track is a winner. One day, maybe all the hipsters will add this - along with Johnny Cash- to their list of mandatory country records one should own.

the beastie boys - license to ill

toby: yeah, we all heard it a million times. I swiped this vinyl from my brother and played it nonstop. like everyone else in the world I could recite “paul revere” verbatim. I was not as cool as I thought I was. hell, nobody will ever be as cool as I thought I was. especially when I was listening to this album.

Pink Floyd - Dark Side of the Moon.

Jesse: I know this record is a convenient one for hipsters to name drop, but I can really say I’ve been into Pink Floyd since I was very young. My dad had a kick-ass 8-track collection (which I still possess today), and though it wasn’t large, it boasted some very quality selections. I actually listed to this album so many times on 8-track (or Stereo 8, as it is formally known) when I was growing up that I still habitually anticipate the exact three points at which the tape-head would switch tracks during album.

joan jett & the black hearts- i love rock & roll

the pink cover. a woman singing sultry, sexually charged rock songs. the riffs. crimson and clover. a 10 year old boy’s mind is changed for the better. forever…

if not for this album, I would probably be married with wife and kids and working as an accountant in a respectable firm.

the best of disney 

toby: I don’t know if this record even exists anymore. it was a collection of 2-3 songs from all of disney’s big hit movies through the late 70s, I think. the sole reason I played this album nonstop was the song “I wanna be like you” from the jungle book. I vaguely remember dancing around and singing along with it. to this day I love louis prima, and I think it all started with his turn as king louie.

Jackson Browne - Lives in the Balance.

jesse: This was the album on the flip-side of the Dire Straights cassette. Of all the early stuff I got into, this record probably the most surprising in how well it holds up (musically, at least). Browne started to get very heavy-handed with his political leanings around the time of this record, and while some of it can be a bit cloying, there are some profound moments to be had. In the same manner that Phil Ochs’ music never found a large fan base after the generation in which it was written, Browne’s 80’s work has been largely cast aside due to much of his lyrical output being uber-specific in terms of the time period to which they pertain. However, I do credit this album with being my primer into the politically-slanted music I would later come to adore (namely U2 and late 70’s punk). It is worlds-apart stylistically, but the message finds a familiar bedfellow in those acts.

the band- self-titled

clay: To an eight year old, this was a scary cover: five mountain men who appeared as if they were just coming back into town after spending years in the wilderness. But the music was warm and inviting- something I imagine would sound good around a campfire. The album has a ragged Neil Young feeling to it and - to my ears- has the most tasteful and best recorded drums I have ever heard. 

The fours:

Dire Straights - Brothers in Arms.

Jesse: My dad had this entire album dubbed onto one side of a cassette (which I proceeded to wear out due to a massive amount of overplaying). The first day I ever heard this was on our way to a fishing trip in southern Oregon when I was around 9 or 10 years old. I didn’t grow up in a house with MTV, so I didn’t even see the video for “Money for Nothin” until I was in college, so it really was the music that made an impression on me (maybe because of my excitement for the trip, or maybe because I’ve always had a penchant for American music as interpreted by British musicians).

the royal guardsmen - snoopy vs. the red baron

Toby: I have no idea what album this song was actually on. here’s why: we had it on 8-track cassette (in the family car) and every time the song ended I would start it over. I didn’t care what else was there and I had no mercy for anyone with the misfortune of being in the car with me. I may have been punished for playing this song too much. if so, I deserved it.

“yellow submarine”-the beatles

clay: For what many consider to be the best pop band of all time, the Beatles sure did have a lot of whimsical, children songs: they wrote  lullabies (goodnight), fantasy/fairy tale songs (octopus garden) and birthday songs

(”Birthday” which is THE song at Showbiz Pizza). Perhaps keeping in close touch with their inner “kid”, was one of the reasons why they were so innovative and prolific. 

The best of these is “yellow submarine” - a song I listened to everyday in my mom’s car when she drove me to school during my fourth grade year. Hearing Ringo sing of this rag tag group of seafaring friends, one can’t help want to dress in some paisley and take a sailing trip. 

You can choose what records you listen to, but you can’t choose your parents- and for all of us our formative years are spent listening to whatever music our parent’s happened to enjoy. For some of us this turned out great, resulting in hours of taking in the White Album or AL Green, while others remained permanently scarred from being force fed Rush or Yes. 

With that in mind, we thought it would be interesting to have members of pacificUV list their top 5 favorite records from their childhood. #5 will be listed today and we will then count down to #1 by Saturday. Enjoy.

The Fives: 

#5 The Police - Reggatta de Blanc.

Jesse: I remember my mom buying this on cassette at my local small-town pharmacy in the late 80’s (probably around the time we got our first stoplight). I’m guessing she bought it solely for “Message in a Bottle”, but soon grew tired of the rest of the album, so it ended up in my collection.

I used to replay “On Any Other Day” ad nauseam, finding it quirky and fun to sing (the song mentions a wombat and isn’t sung by Raffi. Pretty cool.)

#5 edvard grieg - peer gynt suites 1 and 2

Toby: I actually listened to a lot of classical music as a child. I dreamed of becoming a world-class pianist and I would lose myself in beethoven, tchaikovsky, debussy, or any number of other composers. grieg was my favorite for years. his sense of melody is virtually unrivaled, and he paints amazing pictures with his compositions.

“in the hall of the mountain king,” you know it. “morning,” you know it. “anitra’s dance,” most likely. you just didn’t know it was grieg. you do now.

#5 carole king- tapestry

Clay: I recently read a column by magnetic field’s wizard stephen merrit in which he thought that “tapestry” was under produced. To my eight year old ears, it was a beautiful, minimal record, and still is. The songs have a timelessness that most great albums do, and the title track - involving a prince getting turned into a toad- was like getting read a Grimm’s fairly tale.

For those of you who don’t know Harmony Korine, he is the genius/idiot (depending on which side your own) who wrote the move KIDS when he was 18 and went on to write and direct two astounding films in the late 1990’s - Gummo (1997) and Juline Donkey Boy (1999).

Among other things Korine introduced Chole Sevigny to the world, appeared on the David Letterman show on some type of drugs , and then promptly vanished into the ether for seven years.

Well he has returned with a new film called Mr. Lonely and I went to see it last night with some frineds. The plot is simple: a Michael Jackson impersonator meets a Marilyn Monroe who invites him to come live with her in a house with other celebrity look alikes (Buckwheat, the queen of england, charlie chaplin, james dean, etc)

As with his other films, the plot is thin to the point of being non-existent. What makes Korine’s films spell binding are the seemingly random, odd images that stay with you once you leave the theatre: the three stooges look alikes executing a bunch of sheep, buckwheat rambling on about wanting to be a chicken, and nuns jumping out of an airplane and drifting in the air. 

Korine has lost some of his edge and Mr. Lonely is not as shocking or as vital as his previous releases, but it still a unique film that is worth viewing.