Troy's bucket

I tend to get quite offended when people suggest that Zeppelin IV is the best thing that they produced in the long run. Not sure if i'm jumpin' the gun a lil with this one, but maybe...there was a reason why the first 5 were named in order? I think (I) is one of the most inspirational debut's produced. Packed with plenty o' the blues (Willie Dixon covers) mixed with an original raw sound...it was a showcase of what the future held for musical orignality.

Theres something positively real about this album that separates it from any other album made by a female solo artist. The woman of wise, men and great poetry...Joni be they name.
I don't think this is something that grows with time, maybe it does, but it's wholeness resembles a fond memory from childhood, which you're never likely to forget...Always trust 'Blue' when you're not sure whats going on.

I remember the first time i listened to this album, i was layin down on my bed looking out at a misty night sky, the kind where you can still see pretty colours and the stars. As the 1st side rolled, i felt this immense connection between the music and what i was seing. The colours in the sky seemed to express the magic of the Pumpkins, expecially when 'tonight, tonight' and 'thru the eyes of ruby'came up...there was this magical feeling that i think you have to be kinda unconscious to feel, a little distant from the distractions of reality. This moment was a gateway for letting go of the visual reality and dipping into a fairytale imagination with beautiful melodies that i thought were non-existent.

I couldn't really try to pinpoint an REM album that hasn't done something fairly capacious, fairly cajunga, for me so i guess I would just have to start with Automatic because it's the one that is most obviously part of me, mainly because I could not tell you the first time I heard it or the initial impact it had on me. It just seems that it was always there, part of my past and present because its lyrics are so interchangeable depending on my own mood. The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite takes me back to a different time. Try Not To Breathe relives the first time I picked up a guitar because it was the first thing I tried to play. Star Me Kitten the time I looked out the window at the trees trying to sleep. Man on the Moon, every time I believed another conspiracy theory and suddenly became aware of things beyond what I knew. Wow, I haven't mentioned a single thing about the actual music have I! Well, you know what they say about opening the floodgates and all that...

This has got to be the most ambient 'driving through the desert' experience that someone, who's never seen a desert can feel.

Debut album by an original punk goddess, Patti Smith kinda took everyone by surprise when it was first released in 1975. Although in the years leading to it, her performances in small new yowwwk venues had earned her the rebellion image that she seemed to worked so hard to project ever since she was a kid... this album is like her explosive mind child full of Patti in her prime. Free money and Horses being my favourites, this album is one that any budding writer or musician should listen to before jumping on the industry bandwagon...

Hmmm, think I can safely say this one's a bit of a favourite for both of us. Funnily enough, I hadn't heard this LP before I went to see Sheryl at Wembley, though I had pretty much everything preceding it, and it really was a case of rush-out-and-buy-the-next-day. I quite like that my first real experience of it was a live one though! Much as I love the sweeping rhythms of Riverwide, nothing quite compares to hearing it echo around an enormous stadium for the first time!! It's five years down the line and for some reason, this is the one I just keep coming back to. Sometimes it sends me to sleep, sometimes it has me jumping around like a jack in the box on acid. At one point I got relatively objective and narky with the fact that it was primarily an "I'm over you and all men suck" type journey (see My Favourite Mistake, A Difficult Kind,etc) but I think I've negotiated with that sentiment now. It's much better appreciated on a more simplistic, journey level, coming in one way and leaving through an alternative exit, which comes across so strongly in the way the rhythms and tones progress. I'd be the first to jump down anyone's throat for recycling age-old lyrics, but it's barely a blip on the radar anymore for me because after all this time, there's a sincerity in the voice so evocative of somebody's experience and their reactions to it. And it's not JUST somebody's experience. Like any good lyrics, the Globe Sessions can be reappropriated to whatever the person listening feels at the time.

well said my friend...