hey 'delia, it's me. eddedneddy. i've got a question for you.
so imagine this. there's a guy, right. he breaks into your house, gun to your head, asks you to pick 3 records out of your collection. just 3. the gun is real and it's an alternate reality in which people can just legally break into people's houses and make them pick records, so there's no loophole out of this. you get to keep those, but he's gonna stomp on every other record you own so the three you pick have to be worth the anguish.
I'm that guy right now. which records do you choose bestie
hi bestie eddedneddy!!!! as terrified as i am by this scenario, your interest in The Record Collection makes me want to scream and cry in the best way possible (insert paragraph about how much i love you here), so let's get into this because i have a gun to my head!!!! also, quick moment of silence for the 550 albums that are about to be stomped into oblivion.
(sorry this is mostly gonna be unedited rambles ecksdee. but thats just how i work)
1. xtc- white music (1978)
starting off strong, establishing my weirdo music taste pretty quickly. i have a weird thing for debut albums that are totally different from the rest of the band's discography, probably because they have a scrappy, unpolished charm. i feel this way about a lot of bands, especially cheap trick. btw, please listen to cheap trick self-titled, it's so good. oh wait i have a gun to my head-
ANYWAY, xtc. a british 80s "new wave" band who are best known for the song "making plans for nigel" and their stuff from 1979 to 1989. their sound during their peak is pretty guitar-oriented and bouncy, but little do many people know that they briefly had a- drumroll please- crazy post-punk keyboard phase!!! woah!!! from 1978 to 1979, they had a guy named barry andrews playing the lo-fi 70s keyboard, and they released two albums with him before he peaced out to form the band shriekback, which is also pretty cool. white music is the first of these two albums, and has sooo much of that scruffy "we don't really know what's happening" energy, i love it so much.
i was obsessed with xtc one summer a few years ago, and while i do love all of their stuff and own pretty much all their albums, their more successful 80s guitar stuff really can't compare to the barry andrews keyboard era. the guitar era is much more polished and professional, but andy partridge's scratchy guitar paired with andrews' squealy synthesizers gives it a very "sharp" feeling. to give you some imagery, this album sounds like what it feels like to walk on a pathway made of nails. in a good way of course. i dunno if there's a positive way to walk on nails, but humour me and imagine.
partridge, who is xtc's de facto leader and the primary songwriter, has said that his style was inspired by comic books, sci-fi, and pop art. ignoring how cool that sounds for a sec, i think that really shows the most on this album, whereas the rest of their catalogue is just "oh weird thingy haha", and is a little more restrained and, like i said, polished. but white music FEELS and SOUNDS like pop art, bursting with all this neon, bright-coloured energy and what have you. it's one of those "aesthetics" that you can't really describe, but you could easily make a pinterest board for. everything about it is so ECCENTRIC!! i feel like it's hard to find anything else like this out there, whereas their later stuff (WHICH I STILL LIKE BTW)
also, quick funny little story: during the "xtc summer" i was a stupid kid who had just gotten her first job and was weirdly loaded with cash, so i just spent all of it ordering random albums off discogs marketplace LMAOO. i managed to track down every single barry andrews xtc ep and album, and they were og uk pressings which took forever to arrive. and i kid you not, not even a WEEK after they all arrived, i saw copies of every single one of them in a record store 10 min from my house. for 10 bucks ea. i was about to burn the damn place down.
- favourite songs: statue of liberty, neon shuffle, i'll set myself on fire, spinning top, into the atom age
2. beastie boys- paul's boutique (1989)
a strange deviation from the theme we had going on there, but my music taste basically does not exist. if a song has a good beat then i like it........ unless it's country music. country sucks.
my love of the beastie boys is kinda weird, because i got into them when i had an utter distaste for any music made after 1985, especially rap and hip hop. this is because i was a stubborn little greaseball who knew absolutely nothing about what hip hop actually was, thinking it was just some lil pump shit or something. but when i heard hey ladies for the first time, everything about hip hop clicked in my brain, and it's been one of my favourite genres of music ever since. while i do like rap, the way that hip hop utilizes samples and how they work together with the flow of the MCs is actual art.
anyone who knows me well knows that i am absolutely obsessed with sampling and the work that goes into it, and this album is what got me into obsessively researching every single sample i hear on a song i like. before this, i had no clue that most of hip hop backtracks were taken from other songs, and that method of "stealing" cool parts of other songs and making it into one big song collage was so fascinating to me. some madlad on youtube made an "every paul's boutique sample" video on youtube, and i think i watch it once every month or something. the dust brothers are such fabulous producers, and the way they seamlessly layer and swap out samples makes my brain explode.
AND THE BEASTIES THEMSELVES!! *sighs wistfully* oh, the beasties. on their debut/previous album they were lowkey annoying (SORRY I DO LIKE LICENSED TO ILL, IT JUST GETS A LIL TIRING AFTER A WHILE!!!), but finding their footing and mixed with all the samples here, they just sound so effortlessly cool. they totally sell the whole thing, it's a nice mix of vulgarity and chill (if that makes sense). their flow and style of swapping from guy to guy is so well-done, i just!!! i love it so much!!! i've always wanted to make a beasties animation, cos their raps just have such strong flow and energy that are very well suited to that medium. they are just such huge balls of personality, and their strong friendship really shows in the music. imo they're underrated, idc if they technically aren't underrated, I AM DYING ON THIS HILL. also rip mca i miss you sm </3
i've been into the beasties for a while, and i think i've had a different fav album of theirs each year, but i think paul's boutique is my actual fav forever. it hypes you up and makes you feel super cool, whether you're driving with your dad to the grocery store or walking downtown wearing a super awesome outfit. you just crank the volume up to 11 and enjoy yourself babey!! GET FUNK-AY!!!!
- favourite songs: 3 minute rule, car thief, the sounds of science, shake your rump, egg man, b-boy bouillabaisse
3. todd rundgren- a wizard, a true star (1973)
saved this one for last, because this is the only one that i would pick to be saved without even thinking about it. if you were gonna stomp 552 of my records into oblivion and only let me keep one, it would be this one, and it's because i don't think i'd be the same person i am today if this album didn't exist. for REAL. todd rundgren (the world's most underrated producer, songwriter, guitarist, music video innovator, etc...) is my favourite artist FOREVER OF ALL TIME and i love all of his albums to the moon and back, but i have such a blatant bias towards awats that i dont really listen to his other stuff that much (LOL)
knowing all that i do about him (because ive read his wikipedia article 500 times and own two books about him, including his lowkey terrible autobio), i think the thing that draws me the most to todd is his absolute "i dont give a fuck" attitude. for his entire career, he's basically just done whatever the hell he wants and not really cared about what makes the most money or appeals to the most people. if everyone's eating bananas, he's painting a carrot green and then gluing googly eyes onto it. in short, he's the type of person who purely makes music- and content in general- for himself, and i really think that awats shows that in the best way. he had great commercial success with his prev album something/anything, and had a huge new audience of pop radio listeners that were eager to hear more sappy soft rock or whatever. and you know what he does? guess. yeah, you got it, he makes a bonkers psychedelic trip prog-electronic fusion album that completely alienates his entire new normie fanbase, and then goes on an unintelligible prog tangent for the rest of the 70s, to the point where you'd have to be a pretty dedicated fan to stay interested (i am. i love the prog era. todd and initiation fuck).
awats is just kinda... unapologetic. before this todd had "fuck it" insane moments on his albums, but they were kinda few and far between, this is entirely him just doing WHATEVER. the first side of the record is just random song fragments, completely unrelated to each other, but at the same time it's just so insane that it kinda makes sense i guess?? to a reg person this is probably all a bunch of random noises and screams, but to ME it is a cinematic, passionate work of art from one of music's most brilliant and creative personalities. getting into the specifics of why i like the music so much will get redundant and long, so i'm not gonna get into it. but lemme just say that the one thing this album has over the others is that i do not dislike a single song on here. not even a little bit. with white music & paul's boutique, there are songs that i'm just okay on, but awats has a ""song"" that is literally just dog noises and i still like it. everything about it is just... idk. hashtag perf.
even if the music sucked, or it had no artistic integrity, it would still be my favourite of all time because of the emotional significance it has for me. awats entered my life during a really difficult time, where i was miserable all the time and hated myself. i felt like i had no purpose in life or no friends to turn to, so having a cool album and guy to obsess over numbed the pain. the other two album picks have helped me thru some hard times too, but awats has so many memories and emotions attached to it, good and bad. i remember laying in bed and crying listening to sometimes i dont know what to feel, but i ALSO remember bouncing down the street singing along to you don't have to camp around. my all-time favourite record shopping experience when i was at my first record fair in 2019, anxiously searching all the huge crates, then magically finding a copy of it in all its glory.. with some random guy's name scrawled across the beautiful back cover. i actually gasped out loud and jumped all around the room, i could barely even contain my excitement. i don't think any other album i own or will own can replicate that feeling for me, just absolute glee and euphoria but also comfort and solitude. tl;dr... it means the world to me and it's my fave album ever. the end.
- favourite songs (EVEN THO YOU SHOULD LISTEN TO IT IN ORDER) : international feel/le feel internacionale, never never land, just one victory, sometimes i dont know what to feel, the medley, when shit hits the fan, zen archer
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forever appreciative to you for asking me this vezzie!! i love to talk about my records :> hopefully it won't be too hard to sift through this hell post!
