The "Influential Records" Game Addenda, Part 3

I forgot to mention a couple more records that had an influence on me in high school. They were albums that I didn’t buy at the time, but the singles were on a jukebox at a lakeside swimming area I used to go to with my church group. One was “Autobahn” by Kraftwerk. The other was “Jump Into The Fire” by Harry Nilsson. Both of them were so far outside anything else I was hearing at the time that I played them over and over when I was around that jukebox. The hypnotic repetition, and the echoed voice on “Fire”, were elements that I have consistently come back to as a composer and musician.

Now would be a good time to tell another story that happened while in high school: My family was going to go on a cross country trip one summer, and I knew my 8-track tapes of ZZ Top and Elton John would never be allowed to be played by my dad. The music he allowed in the home, other than hymns, was John Philip Sousa and the Tijuana Brass (until Whipped Cream and Other Delights came out; that cover was too much for him). I decided to take a stab at something I thought might work; I bought an 8-track of Harvest by Neil Young. We were driving in the desert, out near the Four Corners, when I finally got the nerve to ask if we could listen to it. I handed to tape over and my dad put it in the machine. And almost immediately yanked it out. So much for listening to my music on that trip.

A few years ago, when Google Earth came out, a friend told me about it so I got a copy for my computer. I liked to find places I had been before, get into Street Level, and drive around. Sometimes I would drive too fast, pushing the app until the 3-D collapsed, then I would take a screen shot of the beautiful mess (that’s the basis for the “Broken World” photos in my Art Gallery). But I remember an afternoon when I was driving through the Four Corners region in Google Earth, when suddenly I recognized the stretch of road I was on: it was the location where my father had shut me down for trying to find music that we might all listen to together. And I realized that I had Harvest in my iTunes library, so I put it on and immediately felt a wave of gratitude wash over me. Resolution. I wept.

And then there was Zappa. I was aware of Zappa in high school, but I didn’t own any of his records at the time. Most of the time, his lyrics seemed juvenile even to me (a juvenile). But one song stood out so much, and the lyrics seemed so poignant, that I lobbied for it to be our graduating class song: “I’m The Slime”. I could already tell that television was a drug that the mainstream was hooked on, and the addiction was only going to get worse. And I had come a long way by my senior year, from the geeky outcast Jesus freak, to being something of a notorious art weirdo presence. I made the pitch to the class “president” and entourage, and because they were freaks in their own way (long hair was the going trend by then), they bought it, and promoted it. And we ended up winning the vote! But then, the inevitable lesson on authority: the school administration overruled the vote and picked the runner up. Who knows what that was?

Zappa has stayed with me. I’m mainly astounded by his inventiveness as a guitar player, and then as a composer. I’ve been told that my own soloing is reminiscent of his (high praise). But picking one record out of all of them would be impossible. Favorites: Chunga’s Revenge, Mothers/Fillmore East, Hot Rats, Zoot Allures, Bongo Fury, Shut Up And Play Your Guitar. I saw him live in 1977 just after moving to Austin, at the Armadillo World Headquarters. He was touring in support of a record that didn’t come out, at least not the way he wanted: Läther. It was to be a four disk set and end his obligation to his record label, but they broke it up into several releases. I bought the t-shirt, and wore it until it was more holes than fabric.