I've loved many, many albums in my life. But there are a few notable ones that set me off in new directions. So here are 20 albums that changed my life .............
1. Chubby Checker - Lets Do The Twist - I was in kindergarten when a balikbayan cousin brought this home. Having spent my early childhood listening to classical music on DZFE, this tuned me in to popular music.
2. The Monkees - Yes, I was a fan of the Monkees. For better or worse, it was a part of my childhood. I never owned the album, but memorized all the songs from watching their show religiously every week.
3. Led Zeppelin - Led Zeppelin: I was in grade 5, and had been listening to garden variety pop music until then. One day, a classmate let me hear this and it blew me away. Until then, I thought of rock and roll in terms of its being twangy, exhuberant, and naughty, in the tradition of Checker, Berry, and Presley. But Led Zep turned rock and roll into rock: heavy, huge, metallic, but bluesy. I never actually owned the album, but the music still reverberates in my brain.
4. Jesus Christ Superstar: I was grade 6 when my family was invited to a listening party of a then controversial new album at a Holy Week church gathering. Thankfully, the "liberal" protestant group assembled reveled in the potent combination of an alternative secular point of view of a biblical story, musical theatre, and rock music. The divide between of traditional religious and worldly secular music was completely erased from my mind.
5. Chicago Transit Authority: Almost simultaneously with Led Zeppelin, I obtained a counterfeit copy of this album in Taiwan (in all its translucent red vinyl glory). The hard driving rhythm section led by Terry Kath rocked, the brass section added a "jazzy" spice, and the vaguely political content of some songs was in tune with the radical 1970s. And I sang the more "pop" tunes regularly in high school programs,
6. Emerson, Lake and Palmer - Tarkus: The album was an unlikely blending of the complexity, sophistication, and virtuosity of classical music, with the forcefulness and aggression of rock. It opened my mind to every other style of rock beyond three-chord blues and the classic song form. Still my favorite prog-rock album.
7 & 8. Juan Dela Cruz Band - Himig Natin & AnakBayan - Pagbabalik ng Kwago: I was 4th year high school. After a sprinkling of earlier attempts at Filipino-language rock, "Himig Natin" broke through and proved to everyone that the future of rock in the Philippines was in original Filipino songs. Thanks to this album, I was the first in my school to write a term paper on what was to become Pinoy Rock. "Pagbabalik ng Kwago" came out almost at the same time. While it was more musically sophisticated than "Himig Natin", it unfortuantely remained rather obscure. But it confirmed in my mind the virtuosity and immortality of Edmund Fortuno.
9 & 10. Chick Corea and Return To Forever - Light As A Feather & Chuck Mangione - Friends and Love: Strangely, I first heard these albums on what was a rock station, DZRJ circa 1974. It ushered me into a world of jazz that I embraced throughout my college days.
11. Music of Mindanao - UP Department of Music Research: I grew up tagging along with my mother, a music professor at the U.P. College of Music. It was in the school's "Wednesday Music Sessions" in the late 60's that I first heard the intricate and driving music of "ethnic" Mindanao. This double-album, culled from field recordings by National Artist Jose Maceda is my permanent reminder of a proud musical culture that pre-dates centuries of Western colonial rule.
12. Miles Davis - Porgy and Bess: Good friend Jane Po let me hear this just before I was accepted into the UP Jazz Lab Band. Miles’ trumpet and Gil Evans arrangements showed me that acoustic big band jazz could be edgy, angular, and cool all at the same time.
13. Oregon - Out of the Woods: Another album lent to me by Jane Po. The odd combination of American Folk, South Asian, Jazz, and Avant-Garde musics was the predecessor of what became the "New Age" genre. But in hindsight, none of the New Age music proponents (spearheaded by William Ackerman and his Windham Hill label) came close.
14. The Pat Metheny Group - The Pat Metheny Group: A student lent me this while I was working in Baguio in the early 80's. I would listen to a cassette dub of this on my then brand new Walkman as the bus was negotiating Kennon Road, and it would make the mountains come alive. Again, the music brought together two contending worlds, the etherial, atmospheric, northern European ECM recording aesthetic, and the Mid-Western American provincial melodies and harmonies of Metheny and Mays' music.
15. Police - Outlandos d'Amour: Another student gave me a copy of this in 1980. After spending half of my college life devoted to jazz, this ushered me back into popular rock, which had turned its back on bombastic posturing of metal, glam, and prog, and replaced it with spunky, quirky, edgy lightness of punk, reggae, and pop.
16. Laurie Anderson - Mr Heartbreak: I hadn't figured out how the avant-garde music I played in college from the likes of National Artists Jose Maceda and Ramon Santos could be applied to the margins of popular music…… until I heard this album. Anderson's calm and reassuring voice, disruptive and disturbing poetry/lyrics, and otherworldly synthetic sounds sent me in so many directions simultaneously. Because of this, to this day very little I hear from today's music surprises me anymore.
17. Sunday In The Park With George - Original Cast: I'm not a big fan of the musical theater. Although I had heard about the genius of Steven Sondheim from West Side Story and A Little Night Music, I never paid that much attention. This album finally got my attention in a big way.
18. Steve Reich - Tehilim: My first brush with minimalism was with Philip Glass, who I didn't like at all because all of the basic motifs sounded too much like the piano ostinato of Chicago's "Color My World:. But Steve Reich's pulsating motifs, rhythmic phase manipulations, and dense polyphonic textures attracted me immediately. If you listen closely, it has permanently infected my approach to techno and electronica.
19. Mariz - Mariz: By the mid 80's I felt female-ingénue OPM had become too lame, with the triple threat of songbirds Jaime Rivera, Joey Albert, and Regine Velasquez ruling the airwaves. But from the moment I heard "Kasalanan Ba" on the radio, the brassy, vibrant songs and arrangements in the whole album restored my faith in local pop music. I even wrote a glowing review that made its way to a local broadsheet. Its a pity that it stayed only briefly on the charts, the producer immigrated to the USA, Mariz got more involved in showbiz and never recorded another album with the same spunk and energy, and hardly anyone remembers it anymore. But it kept me listening OPM until a few years later when I heard …….
20. Eraserheads - Candelaria Jam: Not an album in the strict sense. But from the moment my then-student Raimund Marasigan let me hear this crudely recorded cassette compilation of witty, clever, phenomenological songs from his then unheralded band in 1990, my life was never the same. It set me on a path towards an unexpected but magical career in commercial record production.
