The Dawn of a New Blogtastic Day

For quite some time I have been contemplating what the hell to do with this blog. Using it as a tool to write wasn't working all that well. It was supposed to be a low key way of writing for the two or three people who would actually read the mindless rambling that I was sticking on this thing, but trying to be interesting on even a weekly basis proved difficult. It didn't help that I am lazy by nature. So I abandoned it.

Then about a year and half ago, Stephen Jones introduced me to music blogs, rapidshare, Winrar files and a whole new world. So I've toyed with the idea of sharing some of the music that I've always loved and some of the stuff that I've found in the last few years. And after a few months of mulling it over in what left of the brain that my 9th graders have left me with, I think I've come up with a plan. I decided that not only did I want to include whole albums that I love so much, but also to create some interesting playlists. Actually Tom Hamilton convinced me of that idea when I burned him a few discs for his 40th birthday, and he called me back to tell me how much he liked them. It meant a lot to me, and so i decided that maybe I could do that here for more of my friends if they were interested. So if these playlists suck...you can all blame Tom.

For those of you who are not familiar with downloading music from blogs, it's relatively simple. All you need is a winrar program, which you can download for free at a number of sites. You click on the link that I provide, download it to your computer, then unzip it with the winrar file to somewhere to store it, then add it to your ITunes, or whatever music storage program you are using. If you're not...get with it!!!

I'm going to try to be interesting here, and maybe...I stress maybe...I'll try to start writing here again.

So let me get started. I actually created this list a few months ago. I was listening to Bob Dylan's first self-titled album, which was the 2nd Dylan album I ever owned, and I was thinking, "If I was 22 or 23 in 1963 when this album came out and I happened to buy it and put it on the turntable, would I know just how cool it was in 1963? Would I realize that I was listening to something that would so vastly change the landscape of music? Probably not, because I'm just not that cool. So I put together the first track of first album from a number of artists from the last 45 years...from Bob Dylan to Radiohead. I didn't include anyone who you would have heard before with another group. For instance, I didn't include Lennon's "Mother" because you would have known Lennon before this. Get it? Yeah well anyway here's my tracklist and the link follows. It's chronological, and I know you will probably find things that you think should be here that are not. Such is the dilemma and part of the fun in making such lists. Hope you like.

1. Bob Dylan, "You're No Good," Bob Dylan
2. The Beatles, "I Saw Her Standing There," Please Please Me
3. The Rolling Stones, "Not Fade Away," England's Newest Hit Makers
4. The Who, "Out in the Street," The Who Sing My Generation
5. Jimi Hendrix, "Purple Haze," Are You Experienced
6. Cream, "I Feel Free," Fresh Cream
7. Pink Floyd, "Astronomy Domine," Piper at the Gates of Dawn
8. The Velvet Underground, "Sunday Morning," The Velvet Underground & Nico
9. Led Zeppelin, "Good Times, Bad Times," Led Zeppelin
10. Santana, "Waiting," Santana
11. ZZ Top, "(Somebody Else Been) Shakin' Your Tree," ZZ Top's First Album
12. Tom Waits, "Ol' 55," Closing Time
13. Bruce Springsteen, "Blinded by the Light," Welcome to Asbury Park, N.J
14. The Ramones, "Blitzkrieg Bop," The Ramones
15. Talking Heads, "Uh-Oh, Love Comes to Town," Talking Heads 77
16. The Clash, "Janie Jones," The Clash"
17. Van Halen, "Running with the Devil," Van Halen
18. REM, "Radio Free Europe," Murmur
19. The Beastie Boys, "Rhymin' and Stealin'," Licensed to Ill
20. N.W.A., "Boyz-In-Da-Hood," NWA and the Posse
21. Nirvana, "Blew," Bleach
22. 2Pac, "Young Black Male," 2Pacalypse
23. Radiohead, "You," Pablo Honey

First Song Collection


I'm posting as my first full album, Bob Dylan's self-titled first release. Most people are unfamiliar with this, and I think that's a shame. As you might expect, this is far more "folky" then anything Dylan released afterwards...even more so than the 4 groundbreaking albums that he released after this, before releasing Highway 61 Revisited. Dylan's version of "House of the Rising Sun" is haunting...so much superior to The Animals version that succeeded it. "Man of Constant Sorrow," though done by other artists exceptionally well, seems a naturally Dylanesque tune. And "In My Time of Dying" is also equally evocative and powerful.


My most favorite memory of this album was playing it and then hopping in the shower and hearing my dog Ophie howling to Dylan's harmonica. This was how I discovered that Ophie loved to sing along with the harmonica. I'd play this album in the car with Ophie riding along in the front seat and the windows rolled down and once Bob would come in with that harp, Ophie would always chime right in.

Bob Dylan (1962)