1001 Albums Summary

Back when this first came out I was in college, and somehow thought of this album as only meant for the people who were way cooler than me. Now I think it's right up my alley - which either means I was cooler than I thought in college, or that I've become cool, or that I was an idiot in college.

Mezzo-mezzo on this.

For the people who like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing they like.

There is a phenomenon about character actors where you have seen a given actor so often that you start to recognize them by face and maybe even develop an affection for them, but you don't know their name; someone once called this phenomenon "Hey, it's THAT guy!" For me several of the songs in here have been the auditory equivalent - "Hey, it's THAT song!"

There's a reason hair metal died.

Boy, some people really tried to be like the Beatles in the 60s, didn't they.

Let me get this straight - Madonna collaborated with PRINCE for one of the songs on this album, and THEY DIDN'T RELEASE THAT AS A SINGLE?

Where the hell was I when this was originally released?

I already know it, I already loved it. This was part of the soundtrack of my early 20s, that weird hectic messy growing-pains time where I was newly graduated from college and heady with possibility - and giddy with relief that the Cold War had ended and I was NOT going to blow up at any moment without warning; but that just paved the way for finally looking at all the OTHER ills of the world and wanting to do something about them. Of course I was doing so under the shadow of a whole horde of media looking at us and wondering "goodness what is Generation X going to do and what are they all about," and meanwhile the Boomers were hanging on to their own jobs and positions of power and not letting us actually do anything to explore what we COULD do or find what we WERE all about. But a lot of us tried where we could in small ways. Oh, and "Ignoreland" is still my favorite condemnation of the Reagan/Bush years. "TV tells a million lies, the paper's terrified to report anything that isn't handed on a presidential spoon, I'm just profoundly frustrated by all this, so fuck you, man...."

The very introduction fooled me - I thought it was going to be folky rock, but nope.

I already knew I liked this; my father played this and other blues albums all the time when I was a kid and I imprinted early.

I only knew of Herbie Hancock from "Rockit" and its adaptation into "Cantaloop Flip Fantasia". My eyes have been opened.

There was only one Johnny Cash, wasn't there.

This is a genre of music I've never really known what to do with.

I miss early 90s hip-hop.

Sublime.

Back when this came out I was more into prog rock - but hoo boy this is my jam these days.

Fun fact: when I was a child, my father would choose this album as the dinner music whenever we had a "nice fancy family dinner" in the dining room. I am thus very likely the only person in the world who associates the song "Come Together" with steak and potatoes.