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

[Nostalgic]

1. Joy Division- Unknown Pleasures

2. Slint- Spiderland

3. GZA- Liquid Swords

4. Animal Collective- Post Merriweather Pavilion

5. Black Sabbath- Paranoid

[Lendo]

Bad Brains - ROIR cassette

Black Sabbath - Black Sabbath

John Coltrane - Blue Train

Lungfish - Rainbows From Atoms

Lee "Scratch" Perry - Kung Fu Meets The Dragon

[cheapmuthafukr]

music:

it takes a nation of millions to hold us back

the ramones

till shiloh

enter the 36 chambers

blue train

[Goslett]

Blue train is sooo amazing. Listened to it for the first time in a while this morning with rainymood.

[RandR]

Music:

1)stan getz & joao gilberto live at carnegie hall

2)mahler's titan symphony

3)various chopin (specifically raindrops, a few nocturnes, etc)

4)the roots: things fall apart

5)the get up kids: something to write home about haha

Books:

1)Hesse - steppenwolf

2)Salinger - Franny and Zooey

3)Joyce - Ulysses

4)Steinbeck - Log from the sea of Cortez

5)Neruda - love songs and a song of despair

[LustJaw]

music:

1. Beirut - Gulag Orkestar

2.Tv on the radio - Return to Cookie Mountain

3. Arcade Fire - Funeral

4. Louie Armstrong - The Great Satchmo

5. Radio Citizen - Berlin Serengetti

[spudeey]

Biggie-Ready to Die

Miles Davis-Kind of Blue

Pharcyde-Bizarre Ride II the Pharcyde

The Funky Meters-self titiled

The Who-Tommy

Burgess-A Clockwork Orange

Fitzgerald- The Great Gatsby

Salinger-Catcher in the Rye

Orwell-1984

Vonnegut- Breakfast of Champions

Cliche as fuck, but thats how it is.

[conqueror]

records, this is pretty impossible but they all had huge impacts on my life/taste in music. 10 would be better:

jawbreaker - dear you.

morrissey - viva hate.

xiu xiu - a promise.

earth crisis - destroy the machines.

clipse - hell hath no fury.

books:

in watermelon sugar - brautigan.

the plague - camus.

goodbye tsugumi - yoshimoto.

the thief's journal - genet.

the sailor who fell from the grace with the sea - mishima.

[GregoryH]

Bruce Springsteen: The River

Bruce Springsteen: Nebraska

The Clash: Combat Rock

Bob Dylan: Blood on the Tracks

Woody Guthrie: Dust Bowl Blues

..All albums I grew up listening to on my parents record player, my Dad would play at least one of these 5 albums once a night. I still play these daily, probably always will.

[bfan]

boards of canada - music has the right to children

orchid - chaos is me

radiohead - ok computer

pixies - doolittle

wu-tang clan - enter the 36 chambers

edit: 5 books

ham on rye

the wild boys

100 years of solitude

catch-22

and most importantly: gravity's rainbow

[Max Power]

Chronicoligal order:

Guns'n'Roses - Use your Illusion I&II (got me started for Rock music)

Bad Religion - Suffer (led me into Punk Rock / Hardcore and showed me political clues at the age of 12)

Darkthrone - Transilvanian Hunger (my metal phase culminated with this simple yet pure evil recording)

Opeth - Blackwater Park , Deliverance & Damnation - the Steve Wilson Trilogy (perfect beauty & Rage, frightning and warming all at once)

Turbostaat - Das Island Manöver (my current favorite, in rotation since March)

(hard to name this, though, could easily list 50)

[Dusty Digital]

Records:

Massive Attack - Blue Lines

The Roots - Illadelph Halflife

Magyar Posse - Kings of Time

Miles Davis - Kind of Blue

The National - Boxer

Books:

Dostoyevski - Crime and Punishment

Kundera - The Unbearable Lightness of Being

McCarthy - The Road

Waltari - The Egyptian

Kafka - In the Penal Colony

[Pavlov's Bell]

Kid A

36 Chambers

Illmatic

Is This It

Yankee Hotel Foxtrot

[ninetynine]

Joy Division - Unknown Pleasures

Husker Du - Candy Apple Grey

Neil Young - Live at Massey Hall 1971

Cream - Disraeli Gears

Misfits - Earth AD

[blackmaged]

Weezer : Pinkerton (got me through high school)

Minutemen : Double Nickels on the Dime (the album that got me into 80's hardcore punk)

The Ergs! : dorkrockcorkrod (one of the only albums where I can't listen to just one song; has to be the whole album)

Senses Fail : Let It Enfold You (not a great band, but they were my first "real band")

Beck : Odelay (the closest I will get to hip-hop)

I have bad taste in books, so brace yourself:

F. Scott Fitzgerald : The Great Gatsby

Tao Lin : Eeeee Eee Eeee

Steve Dublanica : Waiter Rant

Khaled Hosseini : The Kite Runner

Anthony Burgess : A Clockwork Orange

[shufon]

Grateful Dead - Terrapin Station

Led Zeppelin - Presence

Nas - Illmatic

A Tribe Called Quest - Midnight Marauders

Peanut Butter Breaks

Rush - Grace Under Pressure

David Bowie - Hunky Dory

Chicago Transit Authority (self titled)

Fuck, there are too many.

[Guest redchris]

1. Bob Dylan - Blood on the tracks.

2. Rolling Stones- Exile on main street.

3. Radiohead- ok computer

4. Neil Young- on the beach

5. massive Attack - Mezzanine

1. Joseph Conrad - Nostromo

2. Graham Green - Brighton rock

3. James Joyce- ulysses

4. Robert Pirsig - zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance.

5. yan martell - life of pi

[Megatron1505]

Music

Appetite For Destruction - Guns N Roses

Neon Bible - Arcade Fire

Stone Roses - Stone Roses

Eagles - Hotel California

Angel Dust - Faith No More

Books

Roads To Sata - Alan Booth

Underground - Haruki Murakami

Angry White Pyjamas - Robert Twigger

Crisis On Infinite Earths - Marv Wolfman, George Perez

Kingdom Come - Mark Waid, Alex Ross

[Forest Fire]

music

blue album - weezer (all i listened to in high school, being a geek this album really spoke to me)

ok computer - radiohead (got me into different genres of music, to this day it remains my favorite album)

veckatimest - grizzly bear (led me into the indie rock scene)

devotion - beach house (helped me through and out of major depression)

the fool - warpaint (so much talent in this group, it's simply an amazing album. i highly recommend it)

[Mr Calvin Oscar]

bringing it all back home

let it be (though not my favorite beatles album)

cryptograms

kid a

clap your hands say yeah

edit: choosing 5 is way too hard i dont know how accurate this list is

[Magsåvningsreserven]

thread is non-intentionally revealing, eh?

[Pavlov's Bell]

music

veckatimest - grizzly bear (led me into the indie rock scene)

Quoted for awesomeness.

[Pavlov's Bell]

Dude Grizzly Bear can suck on my grizzly balls. They're fucking awful and so are the Dirty Projectors. There is so much goddamn garbage out these days that it's sickening. I've just been listening to Neil Young, Coltrane, Bruce, new Kanye and afro-beat. Fuck all else.

[broneck]

to preface, I'd like to say that these are not necessarily my favourite albums of all time (though some are), but the ones that impacted my tastes the most.

The Beach Boys - Pet Sounds. Actual music (i.e. not Raffi) was introduced to me at a young age by my Uncle Joe (RIP).

Nirvana - Nevermind. Showed me that my parents didn't have to like my music for it to be awesome.

Metallica - The Black Album. Too young to know that this was their shittiest album to date, Metallica kicked off my love affair with Metal (one that continues today).

Eminem - The Slim Shady LP. Made me realize that it was okay to like Rap music (though I resisted for quite some time)

The Arcade Fire - Funeral. "Coming of age" album of sorts - transition from High School to university. from the minute I heard those "ooo ooo ooohs" from Neighbourhood 1, this albumstuck with me through my first year, and broadened my listening horizons more than anything else. It opened the door for absolutely everything I'm open to now.

Books:

JRR Tolkein - The Hobbit. One of the first books I remember reading, so if for no other reason than it took me from See Spot Run to actual novels. Made me like Fantasy, and still informs my nerdiness today (MTG anyone?)

George Orwell - Animal Farm. "Oh, these allegory things are neat."

Nabokov - Lolita. Author fucks with writer fucks with readers fucks with...awesome.

David Foster Wallace - Infinite Jest. Made me rethink everything I'd ever thought about depression, suicide, addiction, and support groups (not to mention the relationship of entertainment to these things). Made me okay with reading 1200 page books. And who needs a plot when the ideas are so rich?

Not sure I've found a fifth yet...

[spaces]

Postal Service / Give Up

basically my foundation for how i think about people and how relationships are supposed to be.

[Pavlov's Bell]

Smashing Pumpkins - Siamese Dream: I had this shit on repeat all throughout middle school. I was into Nirvana and Pearl Jam and all the other shit that was good back then, but this record really spoke to me. Rich melodies, great guitar work, perfect mix of loud/soft songs, great lyrics, sequencing, etc.

Snoop Dogg - Doggystyle: Man back in '93 I stole this CD from my buddy for about 6 months and refused to give it back. Shit got played front to back and is still a household favorite. Everything popped off, Snoop was cool as fuck back then and that flow was untouchable and Dre blessed every damn track. This was the first hip-hop record I really got into and it works on so many damn levels (headphones, parties, in the car, anything).

The Strokes - Is This It: I went to high school in '96-'00, and this period was pretty much a death sentence for guitar music. Just about anything new sucked (nu-metal? shitty albums from Foo Fighters and RHCP? I can't even think what else b/c it was a giant suck fest) , half decent acts were experimenting too heavily w/ electronic elements for their own good, and nu-metal, and the internet was almost pre-1.0 so discovering good shit online was next to impossible. I'd basically given up on anything but hip-hop and electronic shit but when the strokes record dropped it just made me wanna get drunk, bang fine look hipster skanks, run around downtown and feel like I should have felt in high school. I must've played it over 100 times in college.

Radiohead - Kid A: I love the Bends and OK Computer but didn't fully appreciate them at the time, but when I first heard Kid A it was like a musical awakening. I'd never heard anything like it before and still havne't. Made me realize that songs don't need to be 3-4 minutes in a verse-chorus-verse structure to be great. Those first chords of "Everything in its Right Place" will always hold a special place in my memories. Some great times with some great friends will be associated with that album and it's akin to the "coming of age" feeling that Clopek related to Arcade Fire above.

Tie b/t Bowie - Ziggy Stardust, and VU - Eponymous. When I started branching out my tastes in music during college, these two records really stuck with me. They were unlike anything I'd heard until then, and it was strange hearing these amazing songs that were barely ever on the radio.

Honorable mention for Outkast - Aquemini, GZA - Liquid Swords, DMX - It's Dark and Hell Is Hot, Green Day - Dookie, Interpol - TOTBL, Juvenile - 400 Degreez, Kanye - MBDTF, Madvillain, Mobb Deep - Murda Muzik, Fleet Foxes, Oasis - Whats the Story Morning Glory

[TReed]

albums:

The Velvet Underground - The Velvet Underground & Nico

My Bloody Valentine- Loveless

Bob Dylan - Bringing it All Back Home

David Bowie - Low

Talking Heads - Fear of Music

books:

Dostoevsky - The Brothers Karamazov

Nabokov - Lolita

Burgess - A Clockwork Orange

Sterne - The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentlemen

Murakami - The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

[Guest Villanelle]

joy division - closer

nick cave - boatman's call

the smiths - the smiths

antony and the johnsons - im a bird now

fleet foxes - fleet foxes

collected poems of sappho

franz kafka - the trial

francois villon - le grand testament

mikhail bulgakov - the master and margarita

dylan thomas - collected poems, 1934–1952

.

[spaces]

Notwist - Neon Golden

Breath taking album, it's what you want your life to sound like

[madapaka]

madvillain - madvillainy

j dilla - donuts

give up the ghost - we're down til we're underground

converge - you fail me