Your Milestone Recordings

As we all know, we are awaiting the re-release of the classic Residents' recordings, Duck Stab and Eskimo. As I had mentioned in an earlier post, regarding Duck Stab and Eskimo, I had ranked them very high in my list of "very important recordings." For me, this list is created from those very rare recordings that put fissures in my brain, and caused me to listen to music from new angles altogether. 

My personal list contains items like: Tom Waits "Rain Dogs", Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band "Trout Mask Replica", Devo "Duty Now For the Future", Public Enemy "It Takes a Nation of Millions", The Residents "Duck Stab" and "Fingerprince", Elvis Costello "Imperial Bedroom", and possibly Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds "The Good Son", Meshuggah "Chaosphere", The Beatles "Revolver". 

It's easy for my head to start veering off in directions that take me to an artist who had one song that inspired my curiosity to an entire genre, or other records by these same artists that really stick in my head as important and incredibly enjoyable recordings, but I have to stop myself. I'm really just trying to nail down a few records, that turned my listening world (and composing, music writing world) upside down. Records that are so ingrained in my head, that I remember exactly where I was when I sat down to listen to one of them, or heard a song from one before I went out and found the record (back when you actually had to drive around and find a store that carried records, hopefully they had one you wanted.)

So, my question to you: Give me your list of 5 records that turned your musical world inside out. These aren't necessarily your favorite top 5 records, or the ones you think are the most important in the grand scheme of "rock". Just the recordings that picked you up, flipped you upside down, and shook you around while the change fell out of your pockets. After you listened to them a few times, you viewed everything differently. 

Maybe you only listened to traditional mariachi music, or only baroque music, and one day someone played you "Eruption" by Van Halen, and yer life changed. It could happen. What's yer story....

holy cow! the royal mail royally goofed!

A customer sent me a photo of his order today...here it is:

I think that's the most graphic and violent demise of a package's contents I've ever seen. Sure items get smashed, bent, shattered. But I've never seen one get so completely wet and left alone for so long that it accumulated mold like this and then someone decided, at that point, to go ahead and deliver it. 

This was a package sent to the UK, and the Royal Mail seems responsible, but aren't doing much about it. I just had to laugh when I saw this. Pretty extreme. If I'm the Royal Mail, I don't deliver this package. I just send a note to let them know that it's lost/damaged, something. It's just too embarrassing to show up at someone's door and leave this there, isn't it? Almost as bad as the flaming dog poop in the paperbag. 

We know the mail is getting bad in some countries (Italy, man, get it together with the mail already!), but this is definitely the worse I've seen. By a long shot. By the way, there were some CDs in there too, digipaks, that got pretty soggy.

Silent Auction...

Hi Folks - 

thanks for all of the posts and comments so far. It is helpful.

There's a new silent auction up right now. Not a ton of items, but a few things of interest. Head on to ralphamerica.com for more info.

Exciting news from THE BOG today about a new release. Are you stoked for this material? Might be coming fairly soon too...hopefully.