Lost in Music
A Self-Indulgent Gen X Musical Biography & 51 Favorites
There’s something about music that makes it simultaneously both avatars of timeless youth and mortality.
The deaths of Prince and David Bowie hurt. But, the passing of Tom Petty in 2017 and, almost exactly one-year ago, Mark E Smith, hit me harder. They had been at my side and in my ears for decades.
I’m easily transported back to 1976 when the eight-year-old me would listen to the Theme from Mission Impossible and the Theme From Hawaii Five-O on a Fisher-Price turntable over and over again as I jumped around in my Toughskins jeans.
If you cede power to it, music can be a guide to constant renewal and personal discovery. It’s the art form most likely to shape you and become part of you. And this is why a death of a favorite musician feels like a personal loss rather than the day’s ephemeral celebrity news.
In the later years of elementary school, I remember excitingly telling my friends about Devo, the B-52s, Petty, The Pretenders and The Cars. I can also remember that most of them found this a good reason for mockery.
Not coincidently the increased work I put into discovering music as a kid coincided with my parents getting divorced and beginning to comes to terms that I was adopted and new very little about my origin.
Music became the texture of my friendships. In 1979-80, I used every last bit of nighttime signal power to listen to (and tape) the KZSU’s Sunday night hip-hop show from the across the bay. And, I begun to hang out with the two kids at school who liked hip-hop. Likewise, I got into AC/DC and Black Sabbath and bonded with the kids with bell bottoms and boots. Eventually I found that my best friends were the ones either most interested in my full scope of musical tastes or those willing to put up with it.
Thank God for MTV. My generation had terrible timing. But, the advent of MTV happened when I was 13 and it became both an older sibling and a window into a wider world. It was a constant, 24–7 celebration of music. For the first time, I got exposed (and overexposed) to pop music. I learned to appreciate a Madonna, Duran Duran and even a White Snake. And I got turned on to so much great stuff that I never would have found on my own. Eddie Grant’s Electric Avenue is a perfect example of song shaped the perspective of the 14 year old me.
High school was full of weekly trips on BART to buy records. Movies like Repo Man, Purple Rain, and Pretty in Pink helped shaped my tastes. It was also a time where I recognized that music mirrored my own dualities. I started becoming a big fan of Bruce Springsteen at the same time I was surreptitiously seeing punk acts like 7 Seconds at Berkeley’s 924 Gilman.
I was gently harassed for loving Tom Petty my freshman year college. Everyone I knew was drunkenly singing Free Falling my senior year. I saw the Red Hot Chili Peppers on Sunset Strip, listened to Metallica at 3am and bought The Smiths, Stone Roses and Dead Milkmen CDs at the little record store in Westwood.
I hit the working world as early 90’s college rock was blowing up and I was all in. I subscribed to CMJ Monthly (which came with a curated CD); followed Pavement around the West Coast; listened to Liz Phair on repeat; and, got super deep into caring about whatever Matador, K Records and Kill Rock Stars were putting out. I also started getting influenced by my little brother who who extended his own music obsession into writing and DJing. His discoveries and tastes have no small amount of influence on my current favorites.
I also went to my first rave and started discovering the power of electronic music. First came Trip Hop, then Drum ’n’ Bass and next Detroit Techno. New worlds completely opened up.
The end of the ‘90s culminated with the apex of my musical experience. I was running comms for the well-financed dot-com start-up Listen.com and was surrounded by musicians and music writers at work.
The fringe benefits were pretty amazing. Seeing Elliot Smith play a small, private show while the subway rumbled below. Hanging with Del the Funky Homosapien and hearing his video-gaming philosophies. Partying with members of REM until a NY sunrise. And putting on great concerts/parties with bands like The White Stripes, Sleater-Kinney and Beulah.
It didn’t get better than that — even when I was at Twitter (despite hanging with Snoop). And, I’m totally good with that. Music was always right there. When my wife and I got married, we offered guests three different CDs — each had was one of our wedding colors and comprised a different genre/flavor of music.
Thanks to Spotify, Pandora, Rdio, Soundcloud, YouTube and, mostly, my kids getting out of the most intensive parenting period, I’ve been able to reconnect with old favorite artists, and, most gratifyingly, discover new favorites. Getting old comes with some benefits. Connecting music together across five decades is one of them.
Today, my young daughters are moving past their early rebellion against all forms of “daddy music” and are slowly letting it in. I won’t push it on them. But, I will do my part to make sure they know there’s more to life than pop music. And, when they are really ready, maybe they will look at this post someday and consider the musical DNA that I am sure is also in them.
Some of these these 51 favorites are in here for nostalgia but most of them are what I like now. I am sure that I’d have a different list in a year. I’ve broken them out by decades below. (And here’s the below as a playlist here.)
’70s
Rolling Stones, Let it Loose (1972). If forced to pick one Stones song. Either this or the entire second side of Tattoo You.
Devo, Gut Feeling / Slap Your Mammy (1978). Their sound seemed almost impossible in 1978.
Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers, Live in Santa Monica (1978). Fantastic full live concert on New Years Eve. You can see what total pros the band is even at an early age. I saw them live probably a dozen times (including multiple shows at their famous run at the Fillmore in SF in 1997), but I’ll forever be relieved and feel blessed to have seen their 40th anniversary tour show less than a month from Petty’s death. They were just as good that night as ever.
Joy Division, She’s Lost Control (1979). I didn’t love New Order in the ’80s but happily got over that and dug into Joy Division as an adult.
The Cure, A Forest (1979). A 20-year-old Robert Smith here…
‘80s
The B-52’s, Give Me Back My Man (1980). Pure talent.
The Plugz, Reel Ten + Iggy Pop, Repo Man from the Repo Man Soundtrack (1984). This movie completely rocked my high school music and cultural tastes and opened me up to punk. Still is in my top three movies of all time, and the soundtrack is a treasure.
The Fall, L.A. (1985). Mark E Smith was the Ezra Pound of music and that doesn’t make it easy to convince people to listen to The Fall. I don’t think I’ve successfully converted one person to them in decades. But, I do know that once you are in, you are in deep.
Circle Jerks, Live Fast Die Young (1985)
NWA, Straight Outta Compton (1988). This album foreshadowed (or opened eyes) to so much in race relations and police brutality. But, given that we played this non-stop at my near all-white UCLA fraternity right after it came out, it also made it clear the potential for hip hop beyond the most obvious and safe cross-over plays.
The Stone Roses, I Wanna Be Adored (1989)
Bob Dylan, Most of the Time (1989). My favorite song by him.
Fugazi, Waiting Room (1989). This really could be one of the all-time greatest concert videos of all time.
‘90s
Blake Babies, Out There (1990). Thank you to Juliana Hatfield for making so much great music my entire adult life.
Richard Thompson, 1952 Vincent Black Lightning (released in 1991). Legend.
The Wedding Present, Blue Eyes (1991). The Wedding Present has been one of my favorite bands since the early-90s. Lead singer David Gedge is both an amazing songwriter and still one of the hardest working guys in rock ’n’ roll.
Curve, Fait Accompli (1992). Ok, I had a crush on Toni Halliday. Also their music more than stands up today.
Pavement, Here (1992). My favorite band and my favorite album.
Silver Jews, Random Rules (1993). The songwriting!
I asked the painter why the roads are colored black.
He said, “Steve, it’s because people leave
and no highway will bring them back.”
So if you don’t want me I promise not to linger,
But before I go I gotta ask you dear about the tan line on your ring finger.
Liz Phair, Stratford-On-Guy (1993). In the summer of 1993, a buddy of mine and I decided to drive to Boise from San Francisco for 4th of July and we listened to this album 50% of the way there. Seeing Phair for the 25th Anniversary tour truly made me all emotional as she (very ably) played the old hits
Throwing Muses, Bright Yellow Gun (1994).
Beastie Boys, Sabotage live on Letterman (1994). Do not. I repeat, do not try to sing this song in karaoke. I’ve learned the hard way.
Green Velvet, Flash (1995). The top dance hit of 1995.
Sleater-Kinney, The Last Song (1995 -performed in 1996). From their eponymous first album. I love everything that they’ve done and they’ve have plenty more complex, interesting tracks. But this one packs so much power. A lo-fi performance in a church.
Ivy, I Hate December (1996). Ivy was the band that I was most sure was going to make it really big and then never did. Their albums are still awesome.
Cat Power, Nude as The News (Live on French TV -1996). Powering through more than a decade of paralyzing stage fright.
Tricky, Christiansands (1998). His collaborations (and beats) were from the future.
Richie Hawtin, Minus Orange (1999). In 1999, I was dancing to Richie Hawtin in a NY club that doesn’t exist anymore. People kept on collapsing and being pulled off to a pile of sleeping humans in a hallway off the dance floor. First and only time that I encountered a mass K-Hole.
Beulah, Emma Blowgun’s Last Stand (1999). This song represents the best of late-90s San Francisco to me. We still had enough of a music scene for there to be tension and anger about the impact of encroaching dot-coms and condos on music rehearsal spaces. But, there was also just the good music and Beulah epitomized this with euphoric live shows. Also, this song is now one my 8-year-old’s favorites.
PJ Harvey, Rid of Me (1993 and performed live in 2001). This solo performance gives me chills every time I watch it. Simply one of greatest living musical artists.
‘00s
Tracy + The Plastics, The Myth of the Front (2001). Riot Grrrl goes electro. A multi-media project by Wynne Greenwood, a queer performance artist, with some really great songs.
Spoon, Everything Hits at Once (2001). So hard to pick a favorite from Spoon but this presses all the good Spoon buttons. Since the mid-00s, I’ve probably listened to Spoon more than any other band.
Miss Kitten & The Hacker, Frank Sinatra (2001). Electroclash was good and fun before it got bad.
2 Many DJs, Joe Le Taxi/Crush on You (2002). Off their second album of mashups before, I think, people called them mashups.
LCD Soundsystem, Losing My Edge (2002). When I saw them live last year, it struck me how old everyone around me was. But, then I thought about how unsurprising this was. What band ever *started* with a paean to being old?
The Knife, Pass This On (“Live” Sen Kväll Med Luuk, 2003). In 2002, my future wife and I walked into a tiny club on the Lower East Side of NY. A hundred or so people were absolutely going nuts for the two DJs/singers. I asked someone who they were and it was so loud that he just had to mouth “The Knife” while making the international sign of stabbing with his arm. I was hooked.
Interpol, Roland (Live in Paris 2003). I like this song. I like Interpol. But this is on here because my future wife and I were at this show.
PJ Harvey, Janet, Johnny + James (The Fall cover, 2004). One of my favorite artists covering one of my favorite songs by one of my favorite artists.
Radiohead, The Headmaster Ritual (The Smiths cover, 2007). Ten or so years ago, Radiohead did a bunch of weird but cool webcasts and this was great.
Telepathe, So Fine (2009). Indie pop banger.
Soft Pack, Fences (Phoenix cover, 2009). Here’s one where I don’t really listen to either Soft Pack or Phoenix all that much but this cover is fantastic.
‘10s
Kurt Vile, Society is My Friend (2011). Favorite track on my favorite album of his.
Jessy Lanza, Kathy Lee (2013). Electronic soul.
The War on Drugs, Under The Pressure (Austin City Limits, 2014). Top-three album from the ‘10s.
Kelela, Rewind (2017). I can listen to this track everyday.
Aldous Harding, Imagining My Man (2017). She got a lot a critical acclaim for her debut album. It’s hard to imagine that this New Zealand artist doesn’t become more internationally known in her follow-up effort.
Kelly Lee Owens, Anxi (2017). My new, favorite electronic artist came out with an almost perfect debut album in 2017.
Yaeji, Raingurl (2017). Korean-American maker of big, fun sounds for the next 50 years.
Mount Kimbie + King Krule, You Took Your Time and Blue Train Lines live in Paris (2017). I haven’t come across a better live YT music video this decade. Blue Train Lines is epic.
Tirzah, Devotion (2018). Music that transcends generations and genres.
Otha, One of the Girls (2018). My favorite track of 2018 excited me when I first heard it just like I was excited by first-listened to music in my teens.
