Top Five Best CDs I've Ever Purchased

In no particular order...

1. "Lost in Space" by Aimee Mann. This CD is gorgeous, powerful and really just a masterpiece. It's one of those lovely pieces that you can just get lost in and it makes you start to float. She's a talent the likes of which has not been seen for years. Her lyrics, voice and passion make Tori Amos (who I also love) look like a hack. She also has a knack for story telling in her music...the last two CDs she put out were "themed" or "storied." Which I think ups her talent a bit...it's not that the 5 minute song is the story, it's a continuous thing--very similar to what Pink Floyd did with "Dark Side of the Moon." Speaking of which...

2. Pink Floyd: "Dark Side of the Moon." Does it get much better than Floyd? Really? They are too amazing. The best part of Live 8 was watching Floyd perform, reunited, for the first time in decades. It was transcendent. In fact, beyond that, this CD has so many memories for me. It's the first CD my father ever bought for me, quite possibly the first one I ever owned, but I can't quite state that definitively. It's one of the only CD's (Aimee Mann's "Forgotten Arm" is another) that I WILL NOT listen to on random, because it's too good for that. The original LP was constructed in a way that negates the usefulness of the random button. It's a flow, and a psychedelic trip--oh yeah, and it fucking rocks.

It's also the first music I ever tripped on. The story goes something like this. Sara and friends see that "Dark Side of the Rainbow" is playing at the local indie theater for their midnight movie the coming weekend. (It's the Wizard of Oz to "Dark Side of the Moon," I swear to God it works, it's fucking creepy) We KNOW that we have to go. And say "hey, we should get drunk and walk down and go (it's only a couple of blocks from where we all live). Some genius in the back says--no, we should smoke POT and go...to which someone, it may have even been me, says "We should SHROOM and go." We all agree, and then realize that our non-druggie selves have no clue where to find shrooms--and we are forced to ask a relative to score for us. We're such geeks.

But yeah, that was a crazy, good night. It's a post in and of itself, and pushed an already good piece of music over the top.

3. Elliot Smith "Figure Eight" Yep, not his most popular, or most mature work. Not something most, even some of his fans, would put at the top--but it's amazing. I listened to it on repeat at work for a bit and just fell over in a spell of lyrics and melodies. The man, as much of a maudlin, emo symbol as he's become, was an amazingly talented songwriter. It's something pretty much insane to read/listen to his poetry and the music he put it to. Emo-teenage angst aside, post my sexual assault this was all I could listen to that I connected with. Everything else (and yes, that included some way emo-ish stuff) didn't cut it. Not at all. The man knew. He knew the pain that so many of us face--and it resonated. It was the only thing that could.

I saw him live a month before he killed himself.

It was a fucking amazing show.

4. "Harvest Moon" by Neil Young. This CD is beyond good. It's so good it's scary--music aficionados everywhere should flock to this thing, it's that good. It's beautiful. It's the classical music of rock--it's what all rock music should be. Capable of being fast or slow, deep, meaningful, complex riffs set to the beat it owns (not the popular one, the one it needs). It's the apex of that generation of music. I had a hard time here. This CD bumped out a couple I wanted to put in: Don Henley's "The End of the Innocence," Jack Johnson's "Brushfire Fairytales" Nirvana's "Nevermind" and countless other more popular CDs. Harvest moon trumps them all. It's too amazing for it's own good.

The melodies are old school. They are classic. They will be good in 50 years, in 100 years. They are Neil Young at his finest. They also have a lot of sentimental value for me--they are what I listened to boating at Lake Powell as I grew up. Obviously not "Harvest Moon" particularly, as it came out later, but in essence--it captures that. It captures the nights around the fire at our next door neighbor's house when my dad and Mike picked up the guitars. It captures the smoke and the family and the love of my childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. It's amazing.

5. Tori Amos "Boys From Pele." This is perhaps the best breakup CD in the history of history. The lyrics are a thinking person's lyrics. While I'm all for screaming Gloria Gaynor at the top of my lungs upon a break up, Tori nailed it with this one. It's her most complex, and in my opinion, least appreciated work. It's so good it's hard to get used to. It takes time and space to appreciate it and let it in. It's hard to let it in. It's glorious when you do.

It's long and complicated. It's raw and unscripted. It's what I miss of her work, because it's what she was before she became edited and more mainstream--not that she's mainstream, but her recent works have been a lot less risky--and I miss the rawness of the Pele years.

For Tori fans, "The Choirgirl Hotel" was up for consideration here, but I consider it a precursor to the amazing Tori that comes out in Pele...


(Double points to everyone that got the "Top Five" reference)