Episode 017 - My Most Influential Albums

This week, join me as I walk through the albums that shaped my musical tastes over the years. These aren’t my favorite albums, or my favorite bands, but the 12 albums that found me at just the right times in my life and helped me develop and evolve my interest in rock-n-roll music, in all it’s forms.

I share stories about how I came upon each of these albums, and how seeing bands live was a big driver in pushing me to seek out more music. You’ll learn more about me, and hopefully start to reflect on your own influences over time.

So lend an ear and take a trip with me through the albums that most influenced me over the years, this week on The Rock-N-Roll Show Podcast!

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Transcript

Musical Evolution Through Influential Albums

Alex Gadd 0:00

Welcome to the Rock-n- Roll Show podcast. I'm your host, Alex Gadd, and this week we're going to try something new. I'm going to share the 12 records that shaped my musical tastes with you. These are not my 12 favorite records or my 12 favorite bands. No, these are the albums that most significantly influenced me in terms of widening the field of what I like to listen to at specific points in time in my life. Share it in chronological order to help trace how I came to love music. And while that doesn't sound like it relates to live music, don't worry, it does, at least in many of the examples. So stick around for my most influential albums right now on the Rock-n- Roll Show podcast. Album number one is the yellow submarine soundtrack by the beatles.

Alex Gadd 1:02

As I've said before on this podcast, when I was little, music was always in house. It was on the radio in my parents' car. My mother loved Motown and the Beatles and my dad was more of a folk music guy. But we had tons of records in the house, everything from the Beatles and the Stones to the various girl group singles on 45, to Bob Dylan, to Glenn Campbell, to Pete Seeger. There were were no Pat Boone records, no Petula Clark. It was the early 70s and rock music was replacing the traditional pop music that had reigned in American society since before World War II, where rock and roll was considered kids music in the 50s and 60s. Those kids had become adults and now had kids of their own and they were becoming the establishment Of all those records in our house. The first one that I remember existing as a set of connected songs was this lesser Beatles album from 1969, which was a soundtrack album from the band's animated film of the same. Yellow Submarine was a follow-up record to 1968's the Beatles, which we know as the White Album, and it came out just as the group was assembling to record the initial tracks that were released on Let it Be a year later. I consider it a lesser album because there were only six tracks of Beatles songs on the album. Side two was an orchestral score written for the film and arranged almost entirely by Beatles producer George Martin.

Alex Gadd 2:23

Of course I didn't know that at the time. I became familiar with the soundtrack because of the film itself, which I got to know because my dad had one of the original Sony Betamax tape players in the early 70s and he had recorded the movie from television, I believe from early HBO Now. This seemed totally normal to me at the time, but it wouldn't be until the late 70s and really the early 80s, when video cassette recorders, vcrs, became common household items. Because there were no movies sold or even rented at that time and with us having exactly one movie on tape, we watched the Yellow Submarine a lot and thus I became very familiar with all the songs involved a lot and thus I became very familiar with all the songs involved. My mom especially was a big Beatles fan, being just the right age to have been caught up in the initial Beatlemania as it swept across the US in the mid-60s. We always had Beatles music in the house, but I wasn't old enough to pick my own music yet, so I watched Yellow Submarine and I absorbed it.

Alex Gadd 3:21

Over time. My tastes evolved in many different directions, but I never lost the love for those songs. Yellow Submarine only a northern song All Together Now, Hey Bulldog, It's All Too Much, and All You Need Is Love, are generally considered lesser songs in the Beatle canon. Maybe not All You Need Is Love, but certainly the others, as various members of the band have commented that these songs and the movie itself were seen as distractions that they needed to complete in order to fulfill contractual obligations and move on to more substantial work. That became the Abbey Road album and the Let it Be album. But to me the songs from Yellow Submarine were on equal footing with I Want to Hold Your Hand and She Loves you. They were foundational stones in my musical discovery. From there I dove into the rest of the Beatles' catalog and there was no turning back. I was then and forever a fan of rock and roll, just like the kids 10 years earlier had been.

Alex Gadd 4:20

Album 2 in my musical evolution is the first rock and roll record I ever asked my parents to get for me. Kiss' Rock and Roll Over. It came out in late 1976, and I heard it soon afterwards when a second grade classmate brought it in for show and tell TJ, wherever you are, thank you. Up to that point, as I mentioned previously, I'd really only heard the Beatles and a lot of Motown that my mom loved, the folk music that my dad preferred, but mostly the 70s AM radio rock that we now know as yacht rock. You know who I'm talking about David Gates and Bread, England Dan and John Ford Coley, Firefall, Seales and Croft. That was apparently the road trip compromise in our family. So when my classmate TJ brought in his older sibling's copy of this Kiss's fifth studio album, as you can imagine, it blew my mind.

Alex Gadd 5:11

The first track, I Want you, was so different from the easy listening music I heard in my house and in the car.

Alex Gadd 5:54

And even at seven I could tell that the lyrics to songs like Calling Dr Love and Ladies' Room were racy and sexy and more than just a little bit inappropriate. It was perfect for a boy with an expanding awareness of the world. Hey, the album even had a soft rock song on it called Hard Luck Woman. That was originally written for Rod Stewart, but the band realized they should keep it and record it as their follow-up to Beth, which was their first hit single ever from their previous studio album. I disliked Hard Luck Woman for a long time because it called back to the music that I was just starting to leave behind, though I've come around to appreciate it now because, hey, I'm old and it's got a great hook. Oh, there was also the eye-grabbing cover, which mixed the band's unique Kabuki-influenced makeup with the comic book pop art that I'm really just getting into at the same time. Also, I caught on to something fairly early.

Alex Gadd 6:51

Kiss seemed to be modeling themselves squarely, definitively, after the Beatles, which gave them a sense of familiarity and continuity for me, almost like a sense of safety. You don't believe me? Check it out. With both the Beatles and Kiss, the rhythm guitarist and the bass player were the main songwriters and the main singers. The lead guitarist generally was allowed one song per album and the drummer occasionally sang a song but never wrote it. Their early albums were largely filled with songs about boys and girls and love, even if the musical style was significantly different. They were each the most popular band in Japan during their heyday, but more than just about any other band in the 70s. Kiss seemed to consciously or otherwise but I'm going to bet it was conscious follow a template that the Beatles laid out for success, and they were able to achieve significant success themselves. Though this is far from my favorite Kiss record, I did play this one a lot until I finally went out and got Love Gun and then Kiss Alive 2. Then I started working my way backwards through their catalog Destroyer, Kiss Alive!, Dressed to Kill, Hotter Than Hell and the self-titled first album. While, as I said, this was not their best collection of song, there's always a place in my heart for Rock and Roll Over the record that finally got me out of the 60s and past soft rock.

Alex Gadd 8:17

In 1979, I went away to sleepaway camp for the first and only time. I didn't really want to go, but it felt like that's what kids in at least the suburbs of New York City did. They went to summer camp, so I did also. I didn't really like it, but I remember the embarrassing things that happened more than anything else Anything else, that is, except the late morning art barn where I was on the rotation that did tie-dye and batik on shirts and made candles and made bandanas. It was there that I first heard Cheap Trick's new live album. At Budokan, one of the counselors had a boombox and played this tape just about every day.

Alex Gadd 8:59

At this point now, 10 years old, I was really into Kiss, and Cheap Trick was definitely not Kiss. They were less heavy and more melodic, still bristling with the energy and the crunchy guitar sound that a 10 year old me was ravenous for. I specifically remember Surrender grabbing my attention at first solely because they mentioned Kiss in the song. From there I started paying more attention, quickly got into I Want You to Want Me, as did everybody else that year. Then I really fell in love with the song Ain't that a Shame? I recognized it and I didn't know where. And then I realized later that it was a cover song originally done by Fats Domino, and he also sang Blueberry Hill. But I knew Fats Domino from Happy Days. The connections were clicking quickly in my 10-year-old mind.

Alex Gadd 9:46

As much as those hits, I was equally fascinated by the opening and closing numbers on the record. The songs Hello there and Goodnight are the same song with different lyrics, the first one welcoming the ladies and gentlemen to the show, the last one wishing the same people a good evening. I remember thinking that was pretty cool and pretty creative. And look, the record is drenched in screaming fans between each song. It sounded exciting as hell. The songs hold up. In my last cover band we played Surrender and Ain't that a Shame? And we were able to get over with both of those songs every time.

Alex Gadd 10:20

I saw Cheap Trick for the first time in 2015. That's 36 years later in Englewood, new Jersey, with three of the four original members, and they played great. They sounded great. Unfortunately, the concert was way too short, even though the set included almost all the songs from Mount Budokan. And look, cheap Trick still releases new records and they release good music, of course. Later in their careers Cheap Trick started covering the Beatles a lot. They had a hit single with a cover of Magical Mystery Tour. They did other Beatles songs, but I was clearly already attuned to that in the summer of 79, where the through line from the Beatles to Kiss Kiss to Cheap Trick just made sense to me. I still look at finding At BudokhaCon as the reward for going to summer camp, or maybe as the sole reason I went there that one summer. Give it a listen from start to finish. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised by how good the whole record sounds.

Alex Gadd 11:20

In tracing my musical evolution with you chronologically, those of you who know me or know of my musical allegiances through this podcast might find it surprising that bruce was not the first but the fourth step in this journey, given my deep love of his music, and this step is due to my family's influence. Both my aunts were plugged into the music scene pretty deeply. They're the ones that had taken me and my then six-year-old sister to see our first legitimate concert, which was the Village People at Madison Square Garden in 1979. Now that was mind-blowing. So we were out in Fire Island in 1980 when my grandparents had a summer house and my family was out there for a couple of weeks and my aunt came out for a visit for the weekend, and while we were walking from the ferry dock to the house, she asked me what I was listening to. I went into an excited description of my love for Kiss and Cheap Trick, as if she had never heard of these. Mind you, I wasn't really aware of how knowledgeable she was because, hey, I was 11 and I was clueless. I was a kid. After listening to me go on for a few minutes, she said something to the effect of you need to start listening to real rock and roll, to bands that have some substance. You need to listen to Bruce Springsteen and the Rolling Stones. Now, being the precocious preteen know-it-all that I was, I made another plea for how great Kiss was, and she smiled, or maybe smirked, and said I'll take you to go see Bruce and you'll see.

Alex Gadd 12:45

The next week my aunt sent me a copy of Darkness on the Edge of Town, bruce's 1978 album, widely considered one of, if not his best overall record, which I tried listening to. But, being completely honest, I struggled to connect with it. It was dark and angry, addressing deep adult themes of disillusionment and struggle. And I was a happy-go-lucky 11-year-old kid who had moved from New York City to the suburbs and spent summers on Ocean Beach with my grandparents and my folks and my cool aunts and uncles. I didn't get it yet.

Alex Gadd 13:16

A few months later my aunt sent me the River Bruce's recently released double album of all new material and, unlike Darkness, it had a lighter feel with a mix of upbeat 60's style rockers and darker but still more personal songs about loss and heartbreak. And there was that catchy first single, hungry Heart, which was all over the radio. I found myself listening to the first album more than the second. Remember a two-record set. The second had more of the brooding songs than the first and Hungry Heart was on disc one, so I listened to that one. Clearly, releasing a good single was and remains a great marketing strategy, but I was still listening to Kiss and Cheap Trick's Dream Police album, which had just come out, along with Queen's latest album, the Game, which had Crazy Little Thing Called Love, and Another One Bites the Dust on it a lot more than I was listening to Springsteen.

Alex Gadd 14:07

Then my mom let me know that my aunt was going to take me to see Bruce in concert at Madison Square Garden over the Thanksgiving Day weekend. I was interested and I remember thinking back to my aunt's prediction. You'll see, on November 28th 1980, I saw, I saw Bruce and the E Street Band perform like their lives depended on it for over three hours and I heard songs, some of which I recognized from having heard them on the radio, not knowing that they were Springsteen songs. Most memorably, I recognized Rosalita and thought oh, that's Springsteen. But live Bruce and the band delivered those same songs with a power and a passion unlike anything I had ever experienced. It was so powerful. I felt the impact within me, experiencing this new thing in real time as an 11-year-old. It was weird. Of course it didn't hurt that I went backstage and met the whole band, even met Bruce for a second, but minus that I still would have been forever changed.

Alex Gadd 15:04

That was the day that live music took a hold of me and it's never let go. I went home and absolutely devoured the river, both discs now, all 20 songs over and over. I eventually made my way through his old back catalog over. I eventually made my way through his old back catalog Years later when I started driving. The Born to Run cassette was the only tape that I played in my beat-up Datsun 510 wagon, literally the only tape. I had no other tapes. Anyone who came with me in that car listened to Born to Run over and over again and that's still my favorite Springsteen record. But the River was the one that locked me in my answer moved on to other music and have a more dispassionate eye towards all artists. That I assume comes from many years of being close to those artists. I'm still a pure fan and Springsteen's music has gotten me through just about everything in my life since that day, november 28th 1980. Thanks, boss. November 28th 1980. Thanks, boss. So far we've gone from the Beatles to Kiss, to Cheap Trick, to Bruce.

Alex Gadd 16:09

By the summer of 1981, I was hungry for more. I was devouring the music now listening to rock and roll radio, mostly on 95.5 WPLJ in New York City, and I couldn't get enough. The music on the charts in 1982 was chock full of all-time great songs. I just checked the Billboard charts for the first half of 1982, and it's amazing. Sticks is too much time on my hands. Hit Me With your Best, shot and Treat Me Right by Pat Benatar. Ah Leah by Donny Iris, turn Me Loose by Loverboy. Dire Straits' Skate Away from their great Making Movies record the Waiting by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers Santana's Winning, the Stroke by Billy Squire, blondie's Rapture Urgent by Foreigner and the Breakup Song by the Greg Kinban were the early favorites, as I can remember. Now I'm 12, coming into my own musical tastes, and it was straight ahead rock and roll.

Alex Gadd 17:03

In August of 82, my aunt sent me the Rolling Stones new record, tattoo you. I had a working knowledge of the Stones music because my aunt had gone on tour with them as their press liaison and honestly, if you listen to rock and roll radio in 1981 or 1982, you heard songs like Satisfaction, sympathy for the Devil, honky Tonk Woman and more pretty regularly. So I knew the Stones' music but I wasn't focused in on them yet. Then Tattoo you came along in late August with the hit single Start Me Up, and the record was a hit right away. Start Me Up reached as high as number two on the singles chart, propelled the album to the top of the Billboard charts for nine weeks. It was their eighth straight number one album in America also their last.

Alex Gadd 17:46

I dove a little deeper and found an odd collection of songs that had been divided between a rock and roll side A and a ballad side B. The rockers were pretty good. Start Me Up was good. I liked the song Black Limousine a lot and Hang Fire was a catchy song that I thought was about surfing. I didn't understand why Mick was singing about surfing, though it was clearly a commentary on England's welfare state. But hey, I was 12. My favorite song on the album was Keith singing Little T&A, which as a 12-year-old boy, that got a lot of attention from me, and the song Waiting for a Friend, which was the last song on the album, the end of the ballad side, beautiful song with an amazing Sonny Rollins sax solo over the outro. So in all, a really good Stones record. But there were so many albums that I was into at the time and I wasn't sold on the Stones yet.

Exploring Musical Evolution Through High School

Alex Gadd 18:35

But the album was followed by another invitation from my aunts to go see the Stones at the Garden that November, so almost a year after seeing Bruce at MSG, I went back to see the band that Bob Dylan once called the greatest rock and roll band in the world. This time I went with my mom and man did the stones deliver? The show wasn't as long as the Springsteen show, nor was the band as committed as the E Street band was, but there was a sense of something. At the time I thought it might have been danger, but later I realized that it was mischief and fun. They were amazing. And again I got to meet the band with my mom and my aunt totally mortifying, but still got to do it and that was it. A lifelong love affair with the Rolling Stones began and I was soon devouring all of their older albums. Seeing this seminal band live sealed the deal. Years later, in college I took the title of this album literally and got their logo tattooed on me. So while Tattoo you is far from my favorite Stones album, it was the gateway and it improved my life immeasurably for having owned improved my life immeasurably for having owned.

Alex Gadd 19:45

I used to spend a lot of time with my aunt Dean and my uncle Howie. We'd been very close since I was a little kid, so spending a weekend afternoon with them in New York City was a semi-regular event when I was a kid, one Saturday in early 1982, I was at their apartment on the Upper West Side. We had just had burgers at Jackson Hall, on Columbus and 85th. We had probably also gotten to West Side Comics to buy comic books and we were back at their apartment listening to music, reading comics. My uncle put on side one of the kinks give the people what they want. Now I didn't pay too much attention until he turned the record over and the first song on side two came on.

Alex Gadd 20:19

Back when LPs were still the primary way to listen to music. Destroyer was that song, one of my all-time favorite songs, and I heard it for the first time on that day. By the time the song was over I asked him to play it again and then, after we finished listening to the second side, I asked if we could hear the first side again. I was hooked. The next week my aunt sent me a copy of the LP and I proceeded to listen to it over and over again. The songs ran the gamut from delicate ballads to aggressive rockers, with a bunch of songs in the middle. Better things around the dial added up and the title track were favorites of mine, but destroyer was already locked in as one of the top songs in the soundtrack of my life.

Alex Gadd 21:02

Soon after, on a spring ski trip with my school, I was turned on to their live double album One for the Road, which had been recorded just three years before Don's Saturday if you're out there, thank you and it was chock full of all the King's many hit songs from before this record, including All Day and All of the Night. You Really Got Me Low Budget. And of course, lola. Lola was the person. The narrator of the song Destroyer met at the beginning of the song, so there was a connection between Lola and Destroyer.

Alex Gadd 21:33

Then, through my teen years, I started exploring their less commercial music, which remains so unique and so great, especially if you check out the Village Green Preservation Society. The rest of the Lola vs Power man album, muswell Hillbillies that era from 68 to 72, so different from the three-chord rockers they started out with and really so interesting. Most of all, though, I learned how foundational the Kinks were to rock and roll. Joining the Beatles and the Stones as the leaders of the British invasion, I ended up seeing the Kinks on three successive tours in the mid-80s until they took a hiatus from regular touring that they have yet to come back from. And I still listen to give the people what they want from beginning to end, a few times a year at least. If you haven't done so, give it a try. They certainly gave me what I wanted and I sure hope they come back for one more tour. Okay, we're on album seven now. If you've been following along, bruce, the Kinks, the Stones and the who got me through middle school.

Alex Gadd 22:35

But by 1983, I knew there was more exciting music out there. I had already picked up on snippets of harder rock Rush's Tom Sawyer, acdc's Back in Black and, for those About to Rock, ozzy's Crazy Train, as well as the previously referenced Kiss, cheap Trick and Queen. But I hadn't fully embraced it yet. My immersion into the heart of rock and roll happened in the summer before my freshman year of high school, 1983. I found the first Van Halen record. Now, this album came out in 1978, five years earlier, so I was definitely late to the party and I actually worked my way back to it from the 1981 single Unchained, which was on their Fair Warning record, and I only found that song by seeing the video. Once MTV came in Unchained, along with Destroyer, at the top of my all-time favorite songs list. But as I discovered Van Halen, I came upon the first record Whoa. The other records were good, but the first record was just incredible, packed from start to finish with great songs.

Alex Gadd 23:40

Running With the Devil has got to be one of the best opening songs on any record, and it came from a brand new band. What a statement. They followed that with Eruption, which was jaw-dropping for me to hear for the first time, and that led right into the cover of the Kinks'. You Really Got Me. So the through line continues. Given my recent love for the Kinks, that was a deal sealer. And then there was Ain't Talkin' About Love, the song with perhaps the most apostrophe marks in any rock song title and still considered one of the band's best songs, one of my favorites as well. Now, that's the way to introduce yourself to the world. And that was only side one. Side two opens with Jamie's crying and includes atomic punk, feel your love tonight, and a second cover song, ice Cream man, which also had a great solo in it. It was really fun. Great attitude.

Alex Gadd 24:27

I still listen to this album from start to finish, no shuffle, no playlist, quite often Along with Guns N' Roses, appetite for Destruction and Hendrix. Are you Experienced? This is, in my mind, one of the three best debut albums I've ever come across. With Meatloaf's Bad Outta Hell and Boston's first album in there as well stands the test of time. Van Halen 1 what do you think? What do you think? We're rolling right through my musical evolution and we're at album number eight.

Alex Gadd 25:03

If you followed along, we've gotten through high school now, where Van Halen joined Bruce, the Rolling Stones, the Kinks and the who is my favorite bands, all of whom I got to see live. At least once I had switched my musical allegiances on the radio from 95.5 PLJ, which had turned into a Top 40 station. 1027 WNEW-FM was now my station playing the 60s to 80s rock and roll before it was labeled classic rock, and Van Halen led me to heavy metal of the mid-80s. It was the Scorpions, bon Jovi, rat and all the hair metal bands, while my sister and some of my friends were listening to New Wave on WLIR. So I got to sample that as well, from Erasure to the Cure and Cult. Also there were movie soundtracks keeping pop rock alive. That was Kenny Loggins' Danger Zone, huey Lewis' Power of Love, phil Collins' Bland Soundtrack work. And then I went to college.

Alex Gadd 25:58

Now UVM, university of Vermont was and is an interesting mix of super waspy and super crunchy, with a broad range of types in the middle. It was also, at the time, glaringly Caucasian, I have to acknowledge. I remember moving day of freshman year in the shoebox dorms on main campus with different people blasting the Dead, elvis Costello's Greatest Hits, bob Marley's Legend also a Greatest Hits album and Steve Miller Band's Greatest Hits out different windows at full volume, in competition with one another. The preppy kids might be into New Wave beyond Elvis Costello or pop as well, but they weren't blaring it out of any windows. The middle-class kids like me were also into straight-ahead rock and roll or even heavy metal, but again, no one was rocking Aerosmith or Springsteen at full volume, though you know I would have liked to that fall. As a first-semester freshman, my friends were largely the people in my dorm, buckham Hall. It's since been demolished.

Alex Gadd 26:54

Vermont had just changed the drinking age from 18 to 21, the second to last state in the US to do so, so we were the first class at UVM that was considered underage, hence we spent a lot of time hanging out in the dorm at night, either studying or watching the one TV in the common room. Luckily we had basic cable on that one TV and we watched either ESPN or MTV most of the time. So it was that late one Friday night I wandered into the common room to see what was going on and it was absolutely taken aback by a video that was playing after 11 o'clock only late night MTV, from a brand new band that I had only heard of in the random notes section of Rolling Stone once or twice before, but had never heard. The video was Guns N' Roses' Welcome to the Jungle. It came on and I didn't know whether I was more scared or thrilled, though I was definitely both. It was such an exciting sound like a way dirtier, way more edgy Motley Crue, more authentically dangerous and hard-living than any popular hair metal band of the day was pretending to be, and so much edgier than Aerosmith or 80s Alice Cooper.

Alex Gadd 28:01

The next day I went straight down College Street to Pure Pop, which was the local independent record shop in Burlington, and I bought the CD, putting it on the CD player. I was amazed. The band had mastered all the forms of hard rock that had come before, from the bluesy hard rock of Aerosmith and Bad Company to the bombastic attack and rough-hewn virtuosity of Zeppelin, to the hair-metal accoutrement of the day. Every song was amazing and every song was different, and this was their first record. Like Van Halen 1, I was forever changed by the thrill I felt hearing these songs for the first time. Welcome to the Jungle was as great an introduction to the band as Running with the Devil had been for Van Halen.

Alex Gadd 28:42

Sweet Child of Mine remains on my all-time favorites playlist for its perfect combination of balladry and groove. There was Paradise City Night Train, mr Brownstone, on and on all cool as hell. I think it's interesting to note that these songs had literally nothing to do with my life. I could not in any way relate to the stories being told or the situations being described. And yet, at 18 and filled with anticipation for what lay ahead of me in my life, this album felt like the soundtrack to moving forward. It still does felt like the soundtrack to moving forward. It still does. Every time I listen to it, I get transported right back to that common room, the first floor of Buckham Hall, standing there, jaw agape, feeling myself leaving my musical safe zone, ready to explore new things.

Alex Gadd 29:39

The first eight albums on my list have all been ones that are now considered classic rock, but, as I mentioned, college was where I started broadening my tastes and opening myself up to different genres and less mainstream bands. My roommate for three of the four years of UVM was a guy named Steve, who you met in episode 13 of the podcast, and he was a big part of helping me do that. He had such cool, varied musical interests, so I am forever indebted to you. Thank you again, steve. But then college is supposed to be the place where you really expand your boundaries, isn't it? And yes, that is rhetorical. Sophomore year was my big year for expanding boundaries. Now, without letting go of Springsteen, u2, pink Floyd or the Stones, all of whom had released solid albums in my freshman or early in my sophomore years, I also got into the Replacements Bob Mould right after he left, husker Du, social Distortion and Fishbone.

Alex Gadd 30:30

It was Fishbone's second full-length album, called Truth and Soul, that stuck with me the most. I heard the song Bonin' in the Boneyard in the spring of 89 and immediately loved the groove of the song. The lyrics were frivolous, but the sound of the song was infectious and undeniable. So back to pure pop. I went to buy the CD. I remember driving home for the summer a couple of months later listening to that record four or five times through and I was hooked. Now, fishbone blended soul and punk and funk and hard rock and reggae into a proto-ska punk music that's been often imitated but it's never been transcended.

Musical Discovery Through Bands and Albums

Alex Gadd 31:08

Fishbone's musicality and the breadth of their songwriting on this one album was, at least in my opinion, a singular achievement in this subgenre that is so prone to derivation. And yes, they were standing on the shoulders of giants, they covered a Curtis Mayfield song and they owe a huge debt to Sly Stone. But that's how music works. Songs like One Day, mighty Long Way, ghetto, soundwave and Pouring Rain each had their own sound and sounded fantastic. The whole album was that way.

Alex Gadd 31:38

But the song that truly bowled me over was the album Closer, a song called Change. Change is almost a folk song, a prayer for the world to improve, for people to treat one another and the planet itself, I suppose, better. All of the band's signature sounds, from the horns to the deep bass lines, to the ferocious energy, were stripped away for this one song. The music was contemplative and soothing and hopeful, to match the lyrics perfectly. The song is really such an accomplishment. I'm amazed it never gets more attention, but it's still there for you to discover 35 years later. Now. Fishbone was really never able to build on this success. Their next record had a few good songs but was an artistic mess overall, at least in my eyes. It was the sound of a band breaking apart. But they and we will always have Truth and Soul, this incredible record.

Alex Gadd 32:30

I listened to this album the entire summer of 1989, which is when I pretty much moved up to Burlington for good. Once I had an apartment at the start of the summer before my junior year. I never really lived at home again and this was the record that provided the soundtrack to that transition from being a kid to taking my first real step out on my own Change. Indeed, as I've mentioned, college was a time of lots of musical discovery for me, as I would assume it is for most people. Lots of new people from lots of different parts of the country come together with different influences and different backgrounds, and there's a local music scene in the college town. Having my roommate, steve, was a godsend in this regard, not only because he brought so many interesting bands to my attention from his pre-college years, but also because he was on the UVM Concert Bureau. That was a group responsible for booking all the shows on campus. They were the concert promoters. So I got to see, or work crew for, a bunch of shows that I might have otherwise ignored because my roommate was working so hard to promote them, because my roommate was working so hard to promote them.

Alex Gadd 33:35

One of those shows and really his last show that he worked on our senior year was Sean Colvin's solo in the school's chapel Ira Allen Chapel on March 2, 1991. She was touring colleges in support of her first album, steady On, which had been released almost 18 months earlier. I had just heard of her a few weeks earlier when I was on the air at my first paid radio disc jockey, a short-lived station in Stowe with a mixed format of pop and adult contemporary music. That was very popular at the time, though it ended up just sounding dull to me. We were playing the song Diamond in the Rough from this record and it sounded interesting. So when Steve asked if I wanted to go see Sean Colvin, I said yes and wandered up the street. I stood at the back of the chapel for the whole show and was absolutely gobsmacked. Her voice was beautiful and haunting and the lyrics were so good. I remember specifically taking notice of Diamond in the Rough Cry Like an Angel, the Dead of the Night and especially the song Shotgun Down the Avalanche. My memory is that she also played a Dylan cover, though I can't remember which one. I do remember she told a story about having been at the Grammys, where she had just won a Grammy for Best Contemporary Folk Album and seeing Dylan backstage and how strange it was for her. But overall a great show and I fell in love with her music that night.

Alex Gadd 35:01

I stayed in Burlington for another 14 months after I graduated, bartending and DJing. Now I was working at the much cooler classic rock station 106 WIZN, the Wizard of Rock. Then, late in the summer of 1992, I drove across the country going to see baseball games in every city I could get to. When I was done I went back to Minneapolis, where Steve was from. Unfortunately, he was moving away to attend graduate school in California. Days after I arrived there, his family and some of his friends from his childhood took me in and were so supportive of me as I tried to get comfortable in the Midwest. It was a tough winter, though, and I was adrift. I was working a going nowhere job and really just hiding out spinning my wheels, despite the new friends and extended family who made me feel so welcome. Why I never tried to get a job in radio there, or even bartending, is beyond me. I had friends, but still felt intensely alone. It was cold and dark all winter, and the CD I listened to the most was Steady On.

Alex Gadd 36:05

The album has a great sound to go with great songs, very solitary though, there are other instruments accompanying Sean's voice and her guitar. Perhaps it was the use of reverb that made the sad songs resonate aloneness more than they might have otherwise, and the positive upbeat songs had a haunting quality, helped by lush backing vocals and wistful electric guitar lines woven through the songs. It all affected me just in such a way. It was like a soundtrack to my life for the moment. Shotgun Down, the Avalanche from Steady On remains forever my favorite Sean Colvin song, a reminder of a time I needed to get through a kind of penance for nothing in particular, except maybe my lack of direction. I love this album more today than I did then, so please give it a listen, preferably on a cold night when you're by yourself with nothing particular to do.

Musical Evolution

Alex Gadd 36:58

Now, after college and discovering Sean Colvin, but before I moved to Minneapolis, that was a time filled with all kinds of new music because I was working, as I mentioned, at a radio station and I had lots of time and access to see new bands. I got into fish around this time. I went to college, where they went to college a few years after them, but I had only seen them in local bars early in their career, at Hunt's and at Nectar's originally, and they weren't that good then. They were definitely still refining their sound. But at WIZN a few years later we were playing Chalk Dust Torture off the Picture of Nectar album and I liked that a lot. That was a rockeralk Dust Torture off the Picture of Nectar album, and I liked that a lot. That was a rocker. So I dug into the Picture of Nectar record and I really found that I loved it. They were great. I saw the Smashing Pumpkins. I saw Jane's Addiction in Montreal. I didn't love those bands that much. I had seen Drivin' and Cryin' open for Soul Asylum a few years earlier and then I had seen Drivin' and Cryin' open for Soul Asylum a few years earlier and then they released a new record, fly Me Courageous, and I really liked that one.

Alex Gadd 37:59

I also discovered a ton of classic rock songs from working at the radio station Old tracks by Pat Travers like Boom, boom Out, go the Lights. A guy named John Astley who had been the who's producer recorded a song called Jane's Getting Serious that we played a lot Blackfoot's Train Train, and still my favorite from that period of time. A guy named Kid Mitchell from the band Max Webster. He had a song called Gopher Soda which went over huge every time I played it on the radio. Now WIZN, where I worked, was the rock station in and around Burlington, so we played the obvious bands that our audiences wanted to hear Skinner, the Allman Brothers, the who, the Beatles, the stones, as well as the current radio hit songs like Tom Cochran's life as a highway Bonnie rates something to talk about and we mixed in some local stuff like fish and the Martin Gigi band Martin, how are you? We mostly played those on my show overnights.

Alex Gadd 38:55

Now we also played a Canadian band that I had never heard of before getting to WIZN, called the Tragically Hip. The Hip had released two previous albums and their third record came out just as I started my WIZN gig. They had a quirky, catchy sound. They had a single out called Three Pistols and we played two other songs Little Bones, which was their first single in Canada off this record, and Twist my Arm. I took home a copy of the CD and found that every song was great.

Alex Gadd 39:24

Who was this band with the cool name and the unique sound, the Hip, it turns out, was fast becoming one of Canada's most popular bands, right up there with Rush and BTO and Bryan Adams. They were not breaking into the US like those other bands at all, except in and around Detroit, which was really close by their hometown of Kingston in Ontario and in Burlington, vermont. In Burlington they were selling out the local 2,500 seat auditorium. When I first came onto them and then in the summer of 92, our station had them do a blues cruise show on Lake Champlain ferry boat. I got to work work that show and stood right next to the band as they absolutely killed while we floated along out on the lake. The energy they projected both in their music and their performance was amazing to experience in such close proximity. The lead singer, gore Downey, was especially intense and physical and quirky. He was a sight to see, you couldn't take your eyes off him. And that was it. I was in.

Alex Gadd 40:24

I went out and got their first major label release, which had two minor hits on it New Orleans is Sinkin' and Blow it High Dough and again, all the songs on that record were winners. I remember a year later I drove up to Montreal with my friends, tony and Mike, and we saw them headline an outdoor festival with thousands and thousands of people outside of Montreal, and it was astounding to see how many people were into them. I followed their career. I got every album they released right up until 2017 when Gord Downie passed away from brain cancer. Now that's a downer, but before he died, the band did one final tour of Canada in 2016. Every show was an event, and the last show in Kingston was broadcast nationally, at least in Canada, on CBC. It was a major event. Their prime minister, justin Trudeau, even attended. I watched it live online and it was awesome. I was smiling at my laptop screen throughout the entire show, even as I realized that there were tears running down my face while we all watched the band, and specifically Gord, come out to take their final bows at the end of the show. Now, just after Gord died. The band released a documentary about this final performance called Long Time Running, which I found on Netflix. So if you can find it, still, watch it. You'll see a band and a man facing death with love, joy and connecting with their fans like few bands ever do. Now I'm proud to be one of those fans and for me, it all started with the Road Apples album back in 1991.

Alex Gadd 42:01

The last album on this musical journey is Ryan Adams' 2001 masterpiece Gold. It came out just two weeks after 9-11, and it was accompanied by the video for the first single, called New York, new York. The video, as it notes at the start, was filmed on September 7, 2001, and large parts of the video are Adams playing an acoustic guitar just under the Brooklyn Bridge on the Brooklyn side, with the Twin Towers squarely behind him. Seeing that video at first was definitely unnerving, and that caused the video to not get played very often. Obviously, it was such a sensitive time in our country's history, but that's how I was introduced, not only to the song but to Ryan Adams as an artist.

Alex Gadd 42:44

I went out and got the CD. Now what I found was shocking. Ryan Adams was a songwriting genius. He could write in all different styles. Gold is filled with pop and country and folk and rock songs with tinges of other genres, mixed in Songs like when the Stars Go Blue La Cienega Just Smiled the Rescue Blues, enemy Fire all great and I got lost in this record for weeks. Eventually I moved on to other things and then the following year the chorus released a beautiful version of when the Stars Go Blue with Bono guesting on vocals. This is a song by Ryan Adams adams, it's called when the stars go blue, dancing where the stars go blue, and that song blew up. However, this record was so influential to me because it served as my gateway drug to country music.

Alex Gadd 43:55

As I delved further into just who Ryan Adams was, I found out he had gotten his start in an all-country band called Whiskey Town. And Adams was, I found out he had gotten his start in an all-country band called Whiskey Town. I had been a fan of Sun Volt, also an all-country band, so I had an interest in all-country in a way. I had never actually enjoyed country music, aside from maybe an Eddie Rabbit or Juice Newton or Glenn Campbell single from the late 70s or early 80s, and certainly there were a few Garth Brooks songs in the early 90s that caught my attention, but otherwise country music was not something I listened to. So between Whiskey Town and Ryan Adams' Gold, that began my slow adjustment to liking country music. Adams put out music at a ridiculous pace, which was good for a new fan, but it was also kind of frustrating, as it seemed he wasn't that concerned with quality control, so the output was mixed at best. In 2004, however, he put out a record with a new band called the Cardinals, and that music was more straight country than his previous albums had been, and I really dug that record.

Alex Gadd 44:58

Then I went to Key West on a trip in the late 2000s and at a Mexican restaurant that was inside a roadhouse some guys got up and played a set of country cover tunes and I found that I liked most of them Jason Aldean's Hicktown, travis Tritt's Whiskey Ain't Working and numerous Johnny Cass songs. Later I knew I could no longer hate country music. I went on and started looking for some good examples that fit my ears. I found the old 97s early drive-by truckers. I rediscovered Steve Earle, I fell for the single Hell on Heels by the one-off group Pistolannies, which was a Miranda Lambert project, and I started liking some Toby Keith songs, at least the ones that weren't too overly patriotic, like Bullets in the Gun and Whiskey Girl. The transition was pretty much as far as I could go until a few years after that I was introduced to the Zac Brown band courtesy of my friends Rod and Christine Rod you met in an earlier episode. We went to see them in concert and I loved it. I am now a ZBB fan without apology.

Alex Gadd 46:03

Well, I've never been able to fully commit to modern country, the Luke Bryans, the Keith Urbans, the Blake Shelton's or the real old timey country. Johnny Cash has a ton of great songs that I like and I'm a huge fan of. Devil Went Down to Georgia, which is a classic rock crossover staple. I love Southern rock, from Skinner to the almonds, to the Georgia satellites, to Blackberry smoke and Chris Stapleton and Sturgill Simpson. Now getting back to Ryan Adams later on we found out that he's a fairly troubled guy who has problems interacting with other people on many levels. But I've learned to separate the artists from their art and my appreciation of country music, and largely thanks to the album Gold, which is still one of the best albums, from start to finish, I've ever heard. So that's it, my musical evolution in 12 records.

Alex Gadd 46:51

Are there more albums that influenced my tastes? Sure, here are 22 of them Jimi Hendrix's Axis, bold as Love. Prince's Purple Rain, luscious Jackson's Fever In, fever Out. Pearl Jam's Ten Los Lobos' how Will the Wolves Survive? Darla Hood's Big Fine Thing Enough's. Enough's self-titled debut record. Lucinda Williams' Car Wheels on a Gravel Road. Bush's Sixteen Stone Hoodoo Gurus. Mars Need Guitarsars. Matthew Sweet's Girlfriend. Patty Rothberg's Between the One and the Nine. Chris Whitley's Living with the Law. Paul Simon's Graceland. Stevie Wonder's Intervisions, heart Dreamboat. Annie Toy, matinee's self-titled debut album, lyle Lovett and his large band. Joan Osbourne's Relish, u2's Joshua Tree, the Upper Crusts with Let them Eat Rock and Stevie Ray Vaughan's entire catalog. Those are just the first 22 that come to mind, but the 12 albums I spoke about in this video are different because they chose me, not the other way around. So that's my list and that's a little bit more information about me.

Alex Gadd 48:03

Thank you for following along. I'd love to hear what you think. So please leave me a comment or DM me. I'll respond to every one of them, and please like this video and subscribe or follow the podcast to make sure you get notified about each new episode, and also please tell your friends. We have a Spotify playlist available for this and every episode, so you can go check that out and listen to the music that I've talked about today, and we will be back next Tuesday with another new episode. The Rock and Roll Show podcast is a World Highway Media production. I'm your host, Alex Gadd , and until next time, remember life is short, so get those concert tickets!