5 albums that changed the way you hear music, 5 books that changed the way you read

[poly800rock]

superchunk - foolish

my bloody valentine - loveless

new order - power corruption and lies

the cure - disintergration

tom waits - bone machine

[Guest supernoob]

blink 182 - dude ranch

n*sync

tina arena - strong as steel

s club

[ImRatherUnique]

bad brains - bad brains

jeru the damaja - wrath of the math

the clash - london calling

common - resurrection

thelonious monk quartet with john coltrane at carnegie hall

allen ginsberg - howl

malcom gladwell - tipping point

[thomh]

Rather cliché choices I'm afraid, with a couple of exceptions:

Albums:

My Bloody Valentine - Loveless

Slint - Spiderland

Black Flag - Damaged

J Dilla - Donuts

Miles Davis - Bitches Brew

Books:

Jack Kerouac - On the Road

Bret Easton Ellis - American Psycho

Mario Puzo - The Godfather

Jeffery Eugenides - The Virgin Suicides

J.D Salinger - Catcher in the Rye

[keska]

Books:

Proust-In search of lost time: more specifically Swann's Way

Céline- Guignol's Band

Danielewski-House of Leaves

Henry Miller-Black Spring

Dostoyevsky-The Idiot

Certainly alot more but those certainly had a large impact, even though miller/Céline have a very similar style.

..............

[vincentvostok]

I'm not sure they necessarly changed the way I hear and read music but they mark an important transition period

cocteau twins - garlands

ultravox - vienna

Dead can dance - dead can dance

lipovetsky - l'empire de l'éphémère

Rosalind Krauss - the originality of the avant-guarde and other modernist myths

Virginia woolf

Madame Blavatsky - Isis Unveiled

Benedikt Konstantinovitch livshits - the one and a half-eyed archer

[speedster8]

REM monster

Daft Punk homework

Jamiroquai spacecowboy

Gorillaz Demon Days

AlianceEthnik (anny album)

SAGA Intransit

Battles Atlas

Ayn Rand The Fountain Head

Wilbur Smith Rage

Paul Allen Whatever You Think, Think the Opposite

Eric Lustbader Kaisho

Alvise Zorzi Il DOge

[sell veg]

pink floyd - the wall

metallica - black

sigur ros - ()

sicko - you can feel the love in the room

jimmy eat world - clarity

[Guest]

beastie boys - check your head

fugazi - in on the kill taker

...

[FEL]

ALBUMS

Revolver - Beatles

Nevermind - Nirvana

Appetite for Destruction - Guns N' Roses

Illmatic - Nas

Enter The Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) - Wu-Tang Clan

BOOKS

Cultural Literacy - Hirsch

Haround and the Sea of Storeis - Rushdie

Heart of Darkness - Conrad

Divine Comedy - Dante

The Road - McCarthy

[groovbusta]

Disintegration - The Cure

Substance - New Order

0898 - The Beautiful South

The Low End Theory - A Tribe Called Quest

Give Up - The Postal Service

Catch-22 - Joseph Heller

Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoevsky

Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand

Norwegian Wood - Haruki Murakami

The Beach - Alex Garland

[lazyhead]

NIN: the downward spiral - After all these years, I still have respect for this album.

Damn amazing.

Tool: Aenima - Made me realize how important humor is to Metal/Hard Rock

Downy: untitled - How important visuals are to the music and what it adds to the music.

Mogwai: Young Team - Realized how potent dynamics can be....still can't get over how awesome the riff hits in on Like Herod.

Can: Ege Bamyasi - Amazing how this stuff was made in the 70's

[sfriedlander]

1984

Big Brother is watching

[Mbrand]

MBV - Loveless

UNKLE - Psyence Fiction

Beatles - Revolver

D.AXELROD - Song of experience

Otis Redding - Love Man

[Sk00tZ]

Music:

Nas - Illmatic

Royksopp - The Understanding

London Elektricity - Billion Dollar Gravy

A Tribe Called Quest - The Low End Theory (But Midnight Marauders is my favorite album)

Daft Punk - Homework

Books:

1984

The Catcher in the Rye

Gulliver's Travels

The Divine Comedy

I Am America (And so can you)

[chromewaves.]

I'm afraid that my picks are rather cliche, as well, but nonetheless.... Even if I don't listen to all of these that much nowadays, at the point I listened to them they were pretty revelatory.

The Smiths - s/t - Morrissey and Marr....what can you really say? Just a brilliant debut and introduced me to what would become probably my favourite band ever.

That said I even came to this band a little "late" (read: late teens) and maybe that's for the best; I can only imagine if I listened to them at 13/14 the embarrasing fanboy shit I would have done due to love for the band.

New Order - Movement - "Oh hey, dancey electro bleep bloop music can actually be pretty cool"

Talk Talk - Laughing Stock/Slint - Spiderland - the former is one of the most beautiful albums of all time, the latter a pretty harrowing listening experience, but both blew my mind and changed what I considered "real" (and "rock") music.

DJ Shadow - Endtroducing - Showed me what you could really do with good samples and good production. Got me into other similar artists and even though I rarely listen to it now, whenever I put it on I'm reminded of just how good it is even over a decade later.

The Beatles - Revolver/OKComputer - Insert Obligatory cannonized rock album here.

I also have to give a mention to "Freaky Styley" by RHCP, simply because at the tender age of 10, I picked up this strange looking cassette with odd cover art that was my first "real" album I ever owned....

[Brockg777]

P.M. Dawn- Of the Heart, of the Soul, and of the Cross- this was the first thought provoking hip hop I listened to, preceeding tribe and Wu.

NIN- The Downward Spiral- I had both Pretty Hate Machine and Broken but those albums were mostly techno pop/coldwave and metal, respectivly. The Downward spiral really broke all boundaries.

Smashing Pumpkins- Siamese Dream/ Sonic Youth- Dirty- Both really inspired a passion for Post Punk music, only music of my generation and not my older sister's.

Rage Against the Machine- ST- I had never heard anyhting like it.

LTJ Bukem- Mixmag live- Made me obesessed with drum and bass, buy tables and learn to dj.

Sade- Lover's Rock- The first time I understood the principle behind less is more.

( Interpol- turn on the bright lights- is that Joy division? Lol. Informed me peopel were making decent rock music again.)

Books

Aldous Huxley- Brave New World

Stephen King- The Drawing of the Three

Ernest Hemingway- For Whom the Bell Tolls.

Saul Williams- Said the Shotgun to the Head

James Baldwin- Sonny's Blues

Gabriel Garcia Marquez- 100 years of Soltitude.

[ollir]

books:-

mervyn peake - gormanghast trilogy

aldous huxley - doors of perception

anything written by graham greene esp. short stories

klebnikov - king of time (weird but i like it))))

music:-

it came from the sea (mixed by bonobo)\

hospital records mixes 1-5 (esp 2 nutone)

yeah yeah yeahs - show your bones

[ollir]

oh..

how could i forget bjork greatist hits

[pantheist]

Albums

Velvet Underground - The Velvet Underground ---This requires no explanation, the VU is incredible. I was never floored by music before this.

Neutral Milk Hotel - In The Aeroplane Over the Sea --- Music shouldn't always be this naked and honest, but sometimes it is required.

Books

JD Salinger - Nine Stories ---The world can be a very simple place, and also a very very sad place. No-one really frames that as well a Salinger.

for esme, with love and squalor (specifically, for me)

[j9bms]

De La Soul : Three Feet High And Rising

The Stone Roses : The Stone Roses

Leftfield : Leftism

Daft Punk : Homework

The Verve : Urban Hymns

[cjbreed]

5 of many, and in no particular order...

Janes Addiction - Nothing's Shocking

Dead Kennedy's - Give Me Convenience or Give Me Death

Guided by Voices - Bee Thousand

Spiritualized - Lazer Guided Melodies

Sonic Youth - Daydream Nation

[landho]

Five albums:

Illadelph Halflife by The Roots

Pet Sounds by The Beach Boys

The Velvet Underground & Nico by The Velvet Underground & Nico

Is This It by The Strokes

Fürtwängler's recording of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony in 1942

Five books:

Philosophical Investigations by Ludwig Wittgenstein

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn

The Art of Loving by Erich Fromm

Watchmen by Alan Moore

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

and The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

[Leeacto]

Crichton - Jurassic Park (4th grade, first long book)

SE Hinton - The Outsiders (5th grade obv. but also I'd never read where the protagonist dies)

Irving Stone - The Agony & the Ecstasy (12th grade, I don't know I just really liked it)

BE Ellis - The Rules of Attraction (age 22, good reflection of college life as I was graduating)

Cormac McCarthy - The Road (2 months ago, It's awesome; go read it)

[cultpop 0217]

Books... Grapes of Wrath, Kavalier & Clay, Slaughterhouse Five, Beneath The Wheel

Music... no particular album, but the first Beatles stuff I heard from my mom. "In My Life" and "I Want To Hold Your Hand" and "Eleanor Rigby" among others.

Kavalier and Clay was epic. i love love love that book. Didn't really change the way i read as much as the other five i listed, but its way up there in my favorite books. i heard Chabon has a new one out; it's supposed to be even better than Kavalier and Clay.

+ on kavalier and clay. great book.

far too many books but a few that made me take notice at the time...the road by mcarthy (age 32) , house of leaves by danielewski (24) , fahrenheit 451 by bradbury (12) picture of dorian gray by wilde (too young)

[Bane]

5 albums

1.the cure-decapatation

2.thursday-waiting

3.atmosphere-sevens travel

4.team sleep-self-titled

5.R.A.T.S-6816

dont really have 5 books :confused:

[klutz]

Music

1. Circa Survive - Juturna

2. Immortal Technique - Revolutionary vol.1

3. Jedi Mind Tricks - Violent by Design

4. Murs - Murs 3:16

5. Alexisonfire - Watch Out!

Books

1. My Bloody Life

2. Flowers For Algernon

3. Between Mice and Men

4. A Million Little Pieces

5. Crank

[davichan]

Miles Davis - Bitches Brew

Pink Floyd - The Wall

Beatles - White Album

NIN - Pretty Hate Machine

Beastie Boys - Licenses to ill

[pepper davies]

1. Chick Corea - Now He Sings, Now He Sobs

2. Sunday at the Village Vanguard - Bill Evans

3. Pat Metheny Group - The Way Up

4. Descendents - Everything Sucks

5. Peter Wiespelway - 6 Suites per Violoncello

I'd say these are the pillars...

[Goslett]

Five books:

Nausea by Sartre

Beyond Good and Evil by Nietzsche

Nothing To Be Frightened Of by Barnes

For Whom The Bell Tolls by Hemmingway

Notes From Underground by Dostoevsky

Slaughterhouse 5 by Vonnegut

And yes I know thats six.