JukeBox Hero

Thanks again to Andrew Careaga, I’m posting the Top Ten Life-Changing albums for me.

I think the reason I love music so much is because of my Dad’s record collection when I was little. He had a little of everything. He had the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, Mitch Ryder, the Bob Crewe Generation, Sam the Sham and the Pharoh’s, James Brown, Beach Boys, Cream, Sly and the Family Stone, Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, Jose Feliciano, Rare Earth and many, many 45’s that my brother and I listened to all the time. I feel lucky to have been exposed to the music we were at the time. Radio played everybody back then, and his record collection showed it.

A little disclaimer: from 1986 till about 2000 I was stuck in the ghetto we know as CCM (Contemporary Christian Music). It isn’t that I am embarrassed by the music that I was listening to then, because that’s what I was listening to at the time. There are many criticisms of CCM, and many of them are valid (and I won’t get caught up in a rant at this time), but what I was listening to had a great impact at certain times of my life. With all that out of the way, here is my top ten. Feel free to add yours in the coments if you would like.

1. To You With Love, Donny - Donny Osmond

The first album I realized (at 6 yrs of age) that chicks dig a guy who can sing. And I mean REALLY dig. Screaming, hair-pulling, fainting, out-of-their-mind, DIGGING a boy who can sing. Yeah, so the music sucks, but it made me aware. Kind of an epiphany of sorts even for a young lad, even if I didn’t really know what it meant yet. Plus, dig those neo-Elvis duds.

but the little girls understand…

2. Smash Hits - Jimi Hendrix

Cool sounds and vibe. I didn’t know it was cool at the time (’71), but I liked the sounds that he made, and he had a spooky, cool voice. I really like “And the Wind Cried Mary”. Not till I learned to play the guitar did I realize what he did was so ground-breaking. I just liked it.

3. Gut Level Music - the Altar Boys

The original “Jesus Punks”. When I first heard them, it was an “oh…my…god…” moment. They sang about being a rebel, and not being conformed to the world with a passion that I was feeling. They played with an energy and raw emotion that tapped into my late teen/early twenties angst and blossoming relationship with Jesus. I saw them a few times in concert and still consider them one of the best concerts I have ever seen. No posing, no fancy lights or smoke machine, just a connection with the audience I had never seen, and a balls-out energy that made me want to LIVE for Jesus.

4. Songs In the Key of Life - Stevie Wonder

The musicality of Mr. Wonder blew me away. I used to go in my sister’s room and steal this record and listen to it when she was out of the house. I could sense his genius even at 12. His voice amazes me. I want(ed) to sing like him. When my voice changed and dropped an octave (picture me: 5′3″ 100lbs with a BASS voice) I was completely heart-broken that I could no longer sing with this record. I remember seeing Stevie on the 2nd incarnation of the Donny and Marie show. Donny and Marie were sitting next to him around a piano and Stevie was having them sing with him. Donny and he were singing “My Cherie Amour” and Donny was watching Stevie and started crying. I thought to myself…”a dream come true, singing with a genius and your idol, I would have cried too…I totallly understand dude”.

5. Freedom - Darrell Evans

The first worship album that I actually worshipped to. My only exposure to worship music was 80’s Vinyard elevator music and christian vocal music teams. The passion in his singing and the intimacy of his lyrics made me weep. Jesus music had never made me weep before, and it kinda freaked me out. I had never heard anyone worship with such abandon before. It changed me from the inside in way that I never imagined. It put personal, private, worship of Jesus into the realm of my life. Since this record, worship music has become a practically everyday part of my life, not just a church-camp experience.

more to come…